The specific name honours superintendent of public schools Oramel W. Lucas, who collected two vertebrae for Cope, near Arkansas River.

Cope estimated the size of the animal as that of an alligator; Charles Craig Mook later compared it to a wolf.

[2] The specific name is derived from Latin aequus, "equal", and facies, "face", referring to the more symmetric extremities of the vertebrae as compared to T. lucasanus.

Cope himself was rather puzzled by the affinities of Tichosteus, providing no classification apart from the fact that it was named in an article dedicated to reptiles.

At the end of the twentieth century it was suggested that it may have been a basal iguanodont;[3] the species are nomina dubia and are incertae sedis within Ornithopoda.