Megalosauroidea

Megalosauroids Temporal range: Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N Possible Late Toarcian and Late Santonian records
Museum of Ancient Life
National Geographic Museum
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Clade:	Saurischia
Clade:	Theropoda
Clade:	†Carnosauria (?)
Superfamily:	†Megalosauroidea Huxley, 1889
Type species
† Megalosaurus bucklandii Mantell , 1827
Subgroups
?†Sciurumimus ?†Juravenator ?†Dandakosaurus ?†Yunyangosaurus †Piatnitzkysauridae? †Megalosauria †Streptospondylus †Megalosauridae †Spinosauridae
Synonyms
Spinosauroidea Stromer, 1915 Torvosauroidea Nopcsa, 1915 Spinosauria Olshevsky, 1991

Megalosauroidea (meaning 'great/big lizard forms') is a

The name Spinosauroidea is sometimes used in place of Megalosauroidea. The superfamily Spinosauroidea was named in 1915 by Ernst Stromer. It is a synonym of Megalosauroidea in almost all modern phylogenetic analyses, and it is therefore redundant. Spinosauroidea was defined as a clade in 1998 by Paul Sereno as the node clade containing the common ancestor of Spinosaurus and Torvosaurus and all its descendants. Thomas Holtz in 2004 defined a branch clade with the same name containing all species closer to Spinosaurus than to Passer domesticus. The ICZN holds that even clade names (which do not yet have any governing body) should be replaced if having a traditional taxon suffix and being synonyms of ranked taxa at or below the superfamily level. The seniority of Megalosauroidea was not followed in most paleontological literature during the 1990s and early 2000s. A series of papers supporting the validity of Megalosaurus as a genus, the relationships of megalosauroids, and the placement of "spinosauroids" among them, published between 2008 and 2010 argued that Megalosauroidea was in fact the valid name for the group.^[1]

The classification of megalosauroids follows a study by Benson in 2010. Note that several "wildcard"

In 2019, Rauhut and Pol described Asfaltovenator vialidadi, 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, paraphyletic with respect to Allosauroidea.^[4]

Carnosauria	Monolophosaurus Spinosauridae Megalosauridae Allosauroidea Xuanhanosaurus Piatnitzkysauridae Asfaltovenator Metriacanthosauridae Allosaurus Carcharodontosauria	traditional Megalosauroidea

See also

• Carnosauria
• Orionides

References