In a 2009 response to Xu and colleague's description of Limusaurus, biologist Alexander Vargas, Wagner and Gauthier stated in 2009 that it is plausible that ceratosaurians underwent BDR independent of the tetanurans, and therefore have no bearing on the issue of avian digit homology. Xu and colleagues replied in 2011 that they still found a step-wise shift more plausible than a hidden frameshift. As demonstrated by a teratological analysis by biologist Geoffrey Guinard in 2016, the abbreviation (mesomelia) and loss of digits (hypophalangia) in the forelimb of Limusaurus is likely the result of a developmental anomaly that appeared exclusively in and persisted throughout the evolutionary lineage of ceratosaurians, and is unconnected to the pattern of digital reduction and frameshift that occurred in tetanurans. Carrano and paleontologist Jonah Choiniere suggested in 2016 that this is supported by the hands of the ceratosaurians Ceratosaurus, Berberosaurus, and Eoabelisaurus having plesiomorphic (i.e. more similar to the ancestral condition of theropods than to derived abelisaurs) metacarpal bones comparable to those of the more basal theropod Dilophosaurus. Xu and biologist Susan Mackem stated in 2013 that the divergent developmental pathways of ceratosaurians and tetanurans are associated with a difference in forelimb function; tetanurans utilized their hands for grasping prey, while the hands of ceratosaurians almost certainly played no role in predation. An ancestral states analysis (estimation of the original anatomy of a group) by Dal Sasso and colleagues in 2018 also found that the digit reduction seen in Limusaurus occurred independently from that in tetanurans. According to this analysis, an axis shift from digit position IV to III took place at the basis of Tetanurae after the fourth finger was lost.
