[1] Trochorhinus is identifiable as a member of Lycosuchidae by only having five upper incisors in each premaxilla, but the specimen is otherwise too poorly preserved and undiagnostic to determine its affinity beyond this family.

Also, although the specimen is too poorly preserved for measurements of the whole snout or skull to be made or even estimated, the distance between the tip of the snout and the last incisor suggests it comes from an individual on the larger end of the known size range of lycosuchids (comparable in proportions to large specimens referred to another dubious lycosuchid, Scymnosaurus ferox).

In 1955, Haughton and Brink were the first to group Trochorhinus with other lycosuchids separately from other early therocephalians on the basis of its presumed "double canines", for which they used the name Lycosuchidae (previously coined by Baron Franz Nopcsa in 1923).

In it, he concluded Lycosuchidae represented a distinct grouping after all (albeit without truly functional "double canines"), and that TM 275 was a lycosuchid due to having only five upper incisors.

However, the specimen is so badly preserved that its identification cannot be determined any further below the family level, and so he regarded Trochorhinus as a nomen dubium and TM 275 as representing Lycosuchidae incertae sedis material.