Megalampitta, Schoddei & Christidis, 2014

Schoddei, Richard & Christidis, Les, 2014, Relicts from Tertiary Australasia: undescribed families and subfamilies of songbirds (Passeriformes) and their zoogeographic signal, Zootaxa 3786 (5), pp. 501-522 : 513

Genus Megalampitta , genus novum

Type species: Mellopitta gigantea Rothschild, 1899

Mid-sized songbirds of crow-like appearance, all-black when adult and apparently with chestnut to fuscous-brown belly and lower back when immature, differing from their apparent sister genus Melampitta in great bulk, long rounded tail with tail/wing ratio 0.80–0.90, thick corvid-like bill with rictal bristles, spiny tips to remiges and rectrices, a bony spur on the alula, proportionally short very stout feet with coarse reticulate scaling over the back of the tibio-tarsal joint, and syringeal musculature with the following features: thin tracheal rostral muscle and Musculus laryngo-syringeus ventralis , vestigial cleft between left and right strands of the M. laryngo-syringeus dorsalis , long as well as powerful M. syringeus ventro-lateralis , and covering of the M. syringeus ventralis by the M. laryngo-syringeus ventralis .

Nomenclature. The generic name Mellopitta Stejneger, 1885 , is a synonym of Melampitta Schlegel, 1871 , of which the type species is Melampitta lugubris Schlegel. The name Megalampitta , although drawing on Melampitta and megas, Greek for large, is to be treated as an arbitrary combination of letters, not as a Latin or Greek word (Art. 30.1.4.1 of the Code); its gender is assigned here as feminine (Art. 30.2.2 of the Code).