Neovenatoridae is a family of carnivorous theropods within the allosauroid group, known from the Early to Late Cretaceous, roughly 130 to 70 million years ago, and generally more lightly built than their close relatives the Carcharodontosauridae. Diagnostic skeletal features include short, wide shoulder blades and hip bones (ilia) riddled with numerous small cavities, a weight-saving adaptation, alongside a moderately long neck, long arms relative to other large theropods, and in some members a pair of low, stubby crests on the skull. Body sizes varied considerably across the family, from mid-sized predators to genuinely giant forms.
The type genus Neovenator, from the Early Cretaceous of England, is one of the best-preserved large theropods from that period and time, while the much larger Chilantaisaurus, from Early Late Cretaceous China, shows the family reached substantial size later on. Neovenatoridae has a notably wide geographic spread for a single theropod family, with material described from Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, and the group's discovery helped establish that large-bodied predatory dinosaurs persisted into the latest Cretaceous through more than one lineage, not only through the tyrannosaurids that dominated in North America and Asia.