Megalosaurids hold a special place in the history of the science: Megalosaurus, described by William Buckland in 1824 from a lower jaw and other fragments found in Oxfordshire, was the first dinosaur ever given a formal scientific name, years before the word "dinosaur" itself was coined. The family are large, bipedal carnivores with robust, blade-toothed jaws, broadly representative of the mid-sized-to-large predatory theropods that dominated Jurassic ecosystems before the rise of the even larger allosaurids and, later, tyrannosaurids.
Because Megalosaurus was named from such fragmentary material, and because "megalosaur-like" remains were for decades used as a catch-all category for many unrelated large theropods, the family's exact membership has been repeatedly revised as better skeletons came to light. Torvosaurus, known from more complete North American and European material, is now considered one of the better-documented members of the family alongside Megalosaurus itself.