Dinochelus steeplensis was a clawed lobster with an extraordinary pair of grasping claws. One claw had a short swollen palm and very long slender fingers lined with fine teeth, suggesting a specialised way of handling prey rather than the heavy shell-crushing style seen in some other lobsters.

Living on the London Clay seabed, it was probably a predator and scavenger taking soft-bodied or relatively small animals. Its bizarre claw makes it one of the most visually distinctive London Clay crustaceans and a good example of how experimental lobster feeding adaptations had already become in the early Eocene.