It is based on holotype TrM 119, a partial skeleton including vertebrae, part of a pubis, a femur, and two tibiae.

The remains were found by Van Hoepen in the late Carnian-early Norian-age Upper Triassic Lower Elliot Formation of the Slabberts district, Orange Free State, South Africa.

Fossil material now assigned to Eucnemesaurus was once placed in a separate genus and species, Aliwalia rex (the generic name was taken from the Aliwal Park Reserve in the Union of South Africa, where the first remains were found).

The fossil evidence of this species was comparably small, with for many years only femoral fragments and a maxilla known, having been sent from South Africa to Austria in 1873 in a shipment with prosauropod bones.

It would have been comparable to that of the large Jurassic and Cretaceous theropods, such as Allosaurus, that evolved tens of millions of years after Aliwalia.