Neurankylus wyomingensis was named by Gilmore (1919). Its type specimen is USNM 7581, a carapace (posterior half of shell), and it is a 3D body fossil. Its type locality is Shoshone River, near Cody, which is in an Albian terrestrial shale in the Thermopolis Shale Formation of Wyoming.

It was considered a nomen dubium by Gaffney (1972); it was recombined as Protobaena wyomingensis by Joyce and Lyson (2015).