on its ulna (forearm bone) led initially to its inclusion as an avialan; however, the rest of the skeleton is rather typically dromaeosaurid in its attributes. Given the extremely close affinities between basal birds and their dromaeosaurid cousins, along with the possibility that flight may have developed and been lost multiple times among these groups, it has been difficult to place Rahonavis firmly among or outside the birds. Rahonavis could be a close relative to Archaeopteryx, as originally suggested by the describers, and thus a member of the clade Avialae, but while the pelvis shows adaptations to flight similar in function to those of Archaeopteryx, they seem to be independently derived. Beginning in the early 2000s, a consensus emerged among most theropod researchers that Rahonavis was more closely related to deinonychosaurs than to avialans, and specifically was a member of the South American dromaeosaurid clade Unenlagiinae. A 2005 analysis by Makovicky and colleagues found Rahonavis to be closely related to the unenlagiines Unenlagia and Buitreraptor. Norell and colleagues (2006) also found Rahonavis to lie within the Unenlagiinae, as the sister taxon to Unenlagia itself. A 2007 study by Turner and colleagues again found it to be an unenlagiine dromaeosaurid, closely related to Unenlagia. This consensus has been challenged, however, by a few studies published since 2009 that have found many traditional "dromaeosaurids", including the unenlagiines, closer to Avialae than to dromaeosaurines. A large analysis published by Agnolín and Novas (2013) recovered Rahonavis as closer to Avialae than to Dromaeosauridae. A cladistic analysis by Cau (2018) recovered Rahonavis as a probable relative of the long-tailed Early Cretaceous avialans Jeholornis and Jixiangornis. The analysis of Hartman et al. (2019) "strongly rejected" the supposed avialan position of Rahonavis, finding its placement in Unenlagiinae better supported as it takes 10 less steps. In 2020, Rahonavis and the South American Overoraptor were found to be sister taxa in a clade sister to the Avialae. The discoverers of Rahonavis initially named it Rahona but changed the name after discovering that the name Rahona was already assigned to a genus of lymantriid moths. Paleobiology Although numerous artists' reconstructions of Rahonavis show it in flight, it is not clear that it could fly; there has even been some doubt that the forearm material, which includes the quill knobs, belongs with the rest of the skeleton. Some researchers have suggested that Rahonavis represents a chimera consisting of the forelimb