In 1987,
Sankar Chatterjee named
Walkeria maleriensis as a new genus and species of
podokesaurid theropod dinosaurs based on specimen ISI R 306, which includes a partial skull, around 28 vertebrae, a proximal left femur, a distal right femur, and an astragalus (ankle bone). The specimen was recovered in the
Godavari Valley locality from the
Maleri Formation of
Andhra Pradesh, India. The remains were collected by Chatterjee in 1974 in red
mudstone that was deposited during the
Carnian stage of the
Triassic period, approximately 235 to 228 million years ago. The specimen is housed in the collection of the
Indian Statistical Institute, in
Kolkata, India. The generic name,
Walkeria, was proposed in honor of British paleontologist
Alick Walker. The specific name,
maleriensis, is a reference to the
Lower Maleri Formation, in southern India, where its
fossils were found. Chatterjee described the taxon as a basal theropod. Since the original generic name was found to be
preoccupied by a
bryozoan, the new replacement generic name
Alwalkeria was created in 1994 by Chatterjee and Ben Creisler. In 1996, Loyal et al. agreed with a theropod identity for the type material. Paul (1988) understood
Alwalkeria as a link between herrerasaurids and the genus
Protoavis, and hence assigned it to
Herrerasauridae based on features of the
femur. However, Langer (2004) and Martínez and Alcober (2009), observed that
Alwalkeria was too primitive to be a
theropod and considered it a basal
saurischian. as a dinosaur
Chimeric identity In 2005, Rauhut and Remes found
Alwalkeria to be a chimera, with the anterior skull referable to a
crurotarsan, and the vertebrae referable to various other ancient
reptiles including
Prolacertiformes; however, they claimed the
femur and the
astragalus were clearly dinosaurian, with the latter possessing saurischian characteristics. In 2011, Novas and colleagues argued that
Alwalkeria remains valid on the basis of an unusual morphology of its femur and an astragalus with a conservative morphology more similar to that of basal dinosaurs. In 2016, Lecuona, Ezcurra & Irmis reiterated the chimaeric nature of the
Alwalkeria holotype, noting that the skull material could be referred to the
Crocodylomorpha. They also observed that the distal femur was more consistent with the morphology of
pseudosuchians, leading them to identify this bone fragment as an indeterminate representative of that clade. The vertebrae lack anatomical features allowing for a precise identification, dinosaur, pseudosuchian, or otherwise. In 2025, Sen & Ray determined the partial femora belonged to a novel representative of the
Lagerpetidae, which they named
Alickmeron maleriensis. The authors did not classify the astragalus within the genus
Alwalkeria, but rather as indeterminate saurischian comparable in morphology to an unnamed Argentinan
herrerasaurid. In 2026, McDavid, Marchant, and Reid stated that
Alickmeron is an objective
junior synonym of
Alwalkeria, due to both taxa having the same type species based on the same holotype,
Walkeria maleriensis, based on ISI R 306. They agreed with restricting the holotype of
Alwalkeria to ISI R 306b, the distal femur, but suggested that the taxon can only be confidently assigned to Pan-Aves (=
Avemetatarsalia)
incertae sedis, not a lagerpetid pterosauromorph as proposed by Sen & Ray (2025). They further regarded the referral of any other material, including the proximal femur, to
A. maleriensis as ambiguous. ==Paleoecology==