Fossil material now assigned toEucnemesaurus was once placed in a separate genus andspecies,Aliwalia rex (thegeneric name was taken from theAliwal Park Reserve in theUnion of South Africa, where the first remains were found). Thefossil evidence of this species was comparably small, with for many years onlyfemoral fragments and amaxilla known, having been sent from South Africa toAustria in 1873 in a shipment with prosauropod bones.[1]
The size of the femur led manypalaeontologists to believe (along with the clearly carnivorous maxilla), thatAliwalia was acarnivorous dinosaur of remarkable size for the age in which lived. It would have been comparable to that of the largeJurassic andCretaceoustheropods, such asAllosaurus, that evolved tens of millions of years afterAliwalia. The original material was believed to bear a strong similarity to theSouth AmericanHerrerasaurus, so much so thatAliwalia was originally classified inHerrerasauridae byPeter Galton.
However, later re-evaluation of the material has shown that the maxilla assigned toAliwalia does not, unlike the other material, belong toEucnemesaurus, as it is clearly from a carnivore. In addition, new material clearly demonstrates this latter genus' sauropodomorph affinities.
