The highest diversity of genera is known from European Russia, but fossils are also known from South Africa, India, China, Australia, Brazil and possibly Argentina.

The terminal Permian catastrophe, which killed off 95% of all types of life, cleared the world of all large therapsids and allowed the proterosuchids to become the top predators.

[1] Recent studies consider Proterosuchidae to be at least a partially paraphyletic grouping, meaning that it does not form a true clade with a single common ancestor and proterosuchids as its only descendants.

[4][5] Proterosuchidae sensu stricto is defined as "all taxa more closely related to Proterosuchus fergusi than to Erythrosuchus africanus, Crocodylus niloticus (the Nile crocodile), or Passer domesticus (the house sparrow).

The placement of fragmentary taxa that had to be removed to increase tree resolution are indicated by dashed lines (in the most derived position that they can be confidently assigned to).