The taxon has been used (e.g. Steel 1973) as a monotypic family and is redundant with the genus Sebecus (Steel 1973). More recently, Sebecidae was defined by Carvalho et al. (2004) based on Sebecus and Libycosuchus (they incorrecctly cited Colbert 1946 as author of the taxon rather than Simpson 1937). Sebecidae is regarded as inactive because the evidence specifically linking Sebecus icaeorhinus to any other crocodiliform is very weak, which has generated many hypotheses regarding its closest relatives (e.g. compare the phylogenies of Carvalho et al. 20004 with Buckley et al. 2000 and Clark 1994).