Carnosauria

 ( Dinosaur Clades ) 

One such clade is Neovenatoridae, a proposed clade of carcharodontosaurian carnosaurs uniting some primitive members of the group such as Neovenator with the Megaraptora, a group of theropods with controversial affinities. Other studies recover megaraptorans as basal Coelurosauria unrelated to carcharodontosaurs. Other theropods with uncertain affinities such as Gualicho, Chilantaisaurus and Deltadromeus are also sometimes included.

Neovenatoridae, as formulated by these authors, contained Neovenator, Chilantaisaurus, and a newly named clade: Megaraptora. Megaraptora contained Megaraptor, Fukuiraptor, Orkoraptor, Aerosteon, and Australovenator. These genera were allied with the other neovenatorids on the basis of several features spread out throughout the skeleton, particularly the large amount of pneumatization present. The pneumatic ilium of Aerosteon was particularly notable, as Neovenator was the only other taxon known to have that trait at the time. Neovenatorids were envisioned as the latest-surviving allosauroids, which were able to persist well into the Late Cretaceous due to their low profile and coelurosaur-like adaptations. Later studies supported this hypothesis, such as Carrano, Benson & Sampson large study of tetanuran relationships in 2012, and Zanno & Makovicky description of the newly discovered theropod Siats in 2013, which they placed within Megaraptora. Fukuiraptor and Australovenator were consistently found to be close relatives of each other; this was also the case for Aerosteon and Megaraptor. Orkoraptor was a taxon difficult to place with certainty.

Phylogenetic studies conducted by Benson, Carrano and Brusatte (2010) and Carrano, Benson and Sampson (2012) recovered the group Megaraptora and a few other taxa as members of the Neovenatoridae. This would make neovenatorids the latest-surviving allosauroids; at least one megaraptoran, Orkoraptor, lived near the end of the Mesozoic era, dating to the early Maastrichtian stage of the latest Cretaceous period, about 70 million years ago.

The cladogram below follows a 2016 analysis by Sebastián Apesteguía, Nathan D. Smith, Rubén Juarez Valieri, and Peter J. Makovicky based on the dataset of Carrano et al. (2012).

Subsequent analyses have contradicted the above hypothesis. Novas and colleagues conducted an analysis in 2012 which found that Neovenator was closely related to carcharodontosaurids, simultaneously found Megaraptor and related genera to be Coelurosauria closely related to Tyrannosauridae. However, Novas et al. subsequently found that megaraptorans lacked most of the key features in the hands of derived coelurosaurs including Guanlong and Deinonychus. Instead, their hands retain a number of primitive characteristics seen in basal tetanurans such as Allosaurus. Nevertheless, there are still a number of other traits that support megaraptorans as members of the Coelurosauria. Other taxa like Deltadromeus and Gualicho have been alternatively recovered as coelurosaurs or noasaurid ceratosaurs. Over the recent years, a majority of researchers have increasingly classified as Coelurosauria.

Several recent analyses do not find a relationship between Neovenator and megaraptorans, which suggests that the latter were not carnosaurs or allosauroids. As a result of these findings, and the fact that Neovenator itself is the only uncontroversial neovenatorid, the family Neovenatoridae sees little use in recent publications.

In 2019, Rauhut and Pol described Asfaltovenator, a basal allosauroid displaying a mosaic of primitive and derived features seen within Tetanurae. Their phylogenetic analysis found traditional Megalosauroidea to represent a basal grade of carnosaurs, paraphyly with respect to Allosauroidea. Because the authors amended the definition of Allosauroidea to include all theropods that are closer to Allosaurus fragilis than to either Megalosaurus bucklandii or Neornithes, the Piatnitzkysauridae was found to fall within Allosauroidea. A cladogram displaying the relationships they recovered is shown below.

In 2025, photos of the destroyed holotype of Carcharodontosaurus were re-examined by Maximilian Kellermann and colleagues and were used to erect the new genus Tameryraptor. A byproduct of this study was the recovery of a novel phylogenetic arrangement of carnosaurs. They did not recover megalosauroids as close relatives of allosauroids. Within Allosauroidea, their analyses, based on the dataset published by Wang and colleagues in 2017, consistently found Metriacanthosauridae and Carcharodontosauridae as sister taxa. They named this novel clade Carcharodontosauriformes and defined it as the least-inclusive clade containing both Carcharodontosaurus and Sinraptor. A simplified version of one of the cladograms they published are shown below.

The injuries were also found to be mostly healed. This healing may indicate that allosauroids had an intermediate metabolic rate, similar to non-avian reptiles, which means they require fewer nutrients in order to survive. A lower nutrient requirement means allosauroids do not need to undertake frequent hunts, which lowers their risk of sustaining traumatic injuries.

Although the remains of other large theropods like tyrannosaurids bear evidence of fighting within their species and with other predators, the remains of allosauroids do not bear much evidence of injuries from theropod combat. Most notably, despite a good fossil record, allosauroid skulls lack the distinctive face-biting wounds that are common in tyrannosaurid skulls, leaving open the question of if allosauroids engaged in interspecies and intraspecies fighting. Remains of the allosauroid Mapusaurus are also often found in groups, which could imply the existence of social behavior. While there are alternative explanations for the groupings, like or habitat reduction due to drought, the frequency of finding allosauroid remains in groups supports the social animal theory. As social animals, allosauroids would share the burden of hunting, allowing injured members of the pack to recover faster.