Shuo Wang and colleagues, in 2017, concluded that the Noasauridae were not nested within the Abelisauroidea as was previously assumed, but instead were more basal than "Ceratosaurus". Because noasaurids had been used as a fix point to define the clades Abelisauroidea and Abelisauridae, these clades would consequently include many more taxa per definition, including "Ceratosaurus". In a subsequent 2018 study, Rafael Delcourt accepted these results, but pointed out that, as a consequence, the Abelisauroidea would need to be replaced by the older synonym Ceratosauroidea, which was hitherto rarely used. For the Abelisauridae, Delcourt proposed a new definition that excludes "Ceratosaurus", allowing for using the name its traditional sense. Wang and colleagues furthermore found that "Ceratosaurus" and "Genyodectes" form a clade with the Argentinian genus "Eoabelisaurus". Delcourt used the name Ceratosauridae to refer to this same clade, and suggested to define the Ceratosauridae as containing all taxa that are more closely related to "Ceratosaurus" than to the abelisaurid "Carnotaurus".