Ronan Allain and colleagues, who described Berberosaurus, performed a phylogenetic analysis and found their new genus to be the most basal known abelisauroid, more derived than Elaphrosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Spinostropheus, but less so than Xenotarsosaurus and abelisaurians. Berberosaurus is distinguished from other theropods by anatomical details found in its vertebrae, metacarpals, and hindlimb bones. Its assignment as an abelisauroid pushes back the record of this group and shows that it had diversified by the Early Jurassic.[2] However, Carrano and Sampson (2008) found it to be a basal ceratosaur outside Neoceratosauria instead.[3] Subsequently, the analysis of Xu et al. (2009) recovered it as a dilophosaurid in unresolved polytomy with Dilophosaurus wetherilli, "Dilophosaurus" sinen