The family Lycosuchidae was first established by Baron Franz Nopcsa in 1923, although the name was often misattributed by later researchers until the end of the 20th century when his precedent was recognised.

[5] Van den Heever would later reconsider his view on lycosuchids and recognise them as a distinct lineage after all, establishing the anatomical criteria for which the family is diagnosed today.

[5][9] The dubiousness of all other historically named lycosuchids is in part due to the often poor quality of their type material, which are often incomplete and badly weathered.

Another confounding factor is that several were distinguished based on features such as the proportions of the canines, snout, and number of postcanine teeth—features now known to be variable and subject to taphonomic distortion—as is the case for Trochosuchus, Trochosaurus and Trochorhinus.

This line of descent was based upon their dentition, beginning with the aqcquisition of two supposed functional large canines in Hyaenasuchus, followed by a decrease in the number of incisors in Trochosuchus and finally to the loss of most postcanines in Lycosuchus.

[3] Following the taxonomic work of Van den Heever in the 1980s, Lycosuchidae become functionally monotypic and subsequently phylogenetic analyses have only ever included Lycosuchus to represent the group.

Notably, Abdala et al. (2014) highlight that while Simorhinella possesses the diagnostic characteristics of Lycosuchidae, it also has several traits in its palate found in scylacosaurids but not seen in Lycosuchus.

This raises the possibility that Lycosuchidae is paraphyletic relative to scylacosaurian therocephalians (Scylacosauridae + Eutherocephalia), with Simorhinella potentially closer to Scylacosauria.

[1] On the other hand, the Russian therocepalian Gorynychus was recovered as the sister taxon of Lycosuchus by Liu and Abdala (2019), effectively in a monophyletic Lycosuchidae (shown below, left).

Indeed, most subsequent analyses of this dataset (such as Liu and Abdala, 2023, below right cladogram) have found Gorynychus to be placed intermediately between Lycosuchus and Scylacosauria (as would be the suggested position of Simorhinella).