Poekilopleuron (meaning "varied ribs") is a genus of carnosaurian theropod dinosaur, which lived during the middle Bathonian of the Jurassic, about 168 to 166 million years ago.

In 1837, Eudes-Deslongchamps published a more detailed account of this discovery in a monograph[4] which was also inserted next year in volume 6 of the "Mémoires de la Société Linnéenne Normandie".

Unlike later Theropoda, whose forelimbs tended toward reduction in length in proportion to the animals' size, Poekilopleuron's were long and, by implication, potent.

The antebrachia (forearms) were markedly short and robust, a characteristic shared with Poekilopleuron's slightly later and considerably larger American cousin Torvosaurus.

[1] The fossil of Poekilopleuron showed a rare complete set of gastralia: fourteen pair of belly ribs supported the body of the animal.

[1] Cau (2024) suggested that the contemporary Dubreuillosaurus (originally assigned to Poekilopleuron) may represent a junior synonym, attributing the skeletal differences as positional and individual variation, as seen in Allosaurus.

[8] Eudes-Deslongchamps' choice caused problems however, when Friedrich von Huene in 1923 concluded it was part of Megalosaurus but as a separate species within that genus.

[9] In 1870 Joseph Leidy created a Poicilopleuron valens based on a fossil probably belonging to Allosaurus.

[10] In 1876 Richard Owen named a Poikilopleuron pusillus, in 1879 renamed by Cope to Poekilopleuron minor; in 1887 Harry Govier Seeley made it a separate genus: Aristosuchus.

Kiprijanow created a Poekilopleuron schmidti, of which the specific name honours Friedrich Schmidt, based on some indeterminate ribs and a sauropod metatarsal.

[14] Because the original fossil was destroyed and no other remains of Poekilopleuron have since been found, and also because of its name change, there is much controversy surrounding its classification that cannot be resolved.

[16] However, a recent analysis by Carrano et al. (2012), also used in subsequent studies of tetanuran theropods, recovered it as a Megalosauroid closely related to Afrovenator.