While resembling erythrosuchids in size and some features of the skull and skeleton, they were more advanced in their erect posture and crocodile-like ankle, indicating more efficient gait.

"Prestosuchids" flourished throughout the whole of the middle, and the early part of the late Triassic, and fossils are so far known from Europe, India, Africa (Tanzania), Argentina, and Paleorrota in Brazil.

In 2011, Prestosuchidae in its broadest definition was determined to be a poorly-diagnosed and obsolete polyphyletic group of pseudosuchians (crocodilian-lineage archosaurs) leading to the more "advanced" rauisuchids and crocodylomorphs.

[10] J. Michael Parrish's 1993 cladistic analysis of crocodylotarsan archosaurs places the Prestosuchidae (including Prestosuchus, Ticinosuchus, and Saurosuchus) outside the crocodylomorph – poposaurid – rauisuchid – aetosaur clade.

[12] A similar but smaller form (perhaps the same genus) is Ticinosuchus of the Middle Triassic (Anisian-Ladinian) of Switzerland and Northern Italy, which was about 2.5 meters in length.