The type species, C. stephani, was originally named "Steneosaurus" stephani by Hulke in 1867.[2] Vignaud (1995) considered S. stephani to be a minor synonym of Yvridiosuchus boutilieri (then still in the genus Steneosaurus),[3] but Johnson (2019) and Johnson et al. (2020) discovered that S. stephani was a basal machimosaur that was separate from Yvridiosuchus, erecting the genus Clovesuurdameredeor for this.[4][1]