Strabops is known from a single specimen from the Late Cambrian (Furongian age) of the Potosi Dolomite, Missouri, collected by a former professor, Arthur Thacher.

Although the latter is the taxonomic position currently accepted, other paleontologists prefer to simply omit the strabopids from their analyzes due to the poor preservation of their fossils.

In addition, it has been suggested that the closely related Paleomerus represents a synonym of Strabops, which are uniquely differentiated by the size of the telson (the posteriormost division of the body) and the position of the eyes.

[3] Like some other arthropod groups, the strabopids possessed segmented bodies and jointed appendages (limbs) covered in a cuticle composed of proteins and chitin.

The head of the strabopids was very short, the back was rounded and lacked trilobation (being divided into three lobes), the abdomen was composed by 11 segments and was followed by a thick tail-like spine, the telson.

The American paleontologist Charles Emerson Beecher described it as the only Cambrian eurypterid, Strabops thacheri, the generic name derived from the Ancient Greek words στραβός (strabós, squinting) and ὄψῐς (ópsis, face) and refers to the inward turning eyes.

[1] In 1912, the American paleontologists John Mason Clarke and Rudolf Ruedemann assigned Strabops to the Eurypteridae family, as well as affirming the possession of a twelfth segment and changing the position of the eyes from anterolateral (in the middle of the front) to lateral.

[11] In 1971, the Swedish geologist and paleontologist Jan Bergström tentatively removed Strabopidae (at that time containing Strabops and Neostrabops) and Paleomeridae (only containing Paleomerus) from the order Aglaspidida based on the fact that the head tagma was too short to accommodate the six pairs of appendages then assumed to be present in aglaspidids.

[8] A study published by Derek Ernest Gilmor Briggs et al. in 1979 has shown that Aglaspis spinifer had between four and five pairs of appendages, but not six, weakening Bergström's argument.

[7] A year later, the British paleontologists Jason Andrew Dunlop and Paul Antony Selden eliminated Strabopida from the suborder Aglaspidida and classified them as the sister taxa of the latter based on the lack of aglaspidid apomorphies (distinctive characteristics), such as the lack of genal spines (a spine placed in the posterolateral part of the prosoma).

The Norwegian paleontologist and geologist Leif Størmer described Paleomerus as an intermediate form between Xiphosura (commonly known as horseshoe crabs) and Eurypterida, only highlighting a unique feature different from Strabops, a twelfth segment.

[2] Nevertheless, a fourth specimen found in Sweden has shown that this extra segment actually represented the telson of the animal,[8] making them virtually indistinguishable.

[9] Aglaspida Strabops Paleomerus Neostrabops Triopus Duslia Pseudarthron Cheloniellon Lemoneites Weinbergina Bunodes Kasibelinurus Xiphosurida Diploaspis Chasmataspis Eurypterida Scorpiones Other arachnids Note that there are several outdated elements.