[1] In 2011, staff of the Geological Survey Research Institute at the village of Nazao, twenty kilometers southwest of the town of Datang, near Nanning in Guangxi, discovered the remains of a large theropod new to science.

The dinosaur was named and described in 2014 as Datanglong guangxiensis, by Mo Jinyou, Zhou Fusheng, Li Guangning, Hunag Zhen and Cao Chenyun.

The spinous processes of the tail vertebrae are broken but the remaining pieces are fairly long and expand upwards.

[1] The describing authors placed Datanglong in the Carcharodontosauria, in a basal position, making use of a previous cladistic analysis of Matthew Carrano.

[1] Soon after the publication, the Italian paleontologist Andrea Cau pointed out that this analysis had been strongly focused on the basal Tetanurae and therefore contained few traits of the Coelurosauria.

[2] In 2017, Adun Samathi and Phorphen Chanthasit reported in an SVP abstract that they found Datanglong to nest in Megaraptora, "sharing the pneumaticity of the ilium with other megaraptorans.

"[3] In 2024, Samathi and colleagues recovered Datanglong in this position once again, identifying nine characters to support its placement within Coelurosauria and also Megaraptora.