Relicts from Tertiary Australasia: undescribed families and subfamilies of songbirds (Passeriformes) and their zoogeographic signal Author Schoddei, Richard Author Christidis, Les text Zootaxa 2014 2014-04-14 3786 5 501 522 journal article 5634 10.11646/zootaxa.3786.5.1 cdd39956-de72-43ea-afa3-cf79f805dd83 1175-5326 4913561 D2764982-F7D7-4922-BF3F-8314FE9FD869 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).