The Key to Scientific Names

Edited by James A. Jobling
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Kranocera

(Columbidae; syn. Ptilinopus Knob-billed Fruit Dove P. insolitus) Gr. κρανος kranos  helmet; Med. L. cera  cere  < L. cera  wax; "One bird I have never been able to find a description of, but which I have known for the last six years, having had a spirit specimen of it, collected in 1869-70 by Captain Ferguson.  This is a pigeon allied to Carpophaga, but having the skull greatly enlarged under the cere, forming a high anteriorly-rounded protuberance at the base of the bill.  The bird is in size and colouration almost the same as Ptiltonopus [sic] iozonus, of the same deep green, and having the same bright deep orange spot on the upper parts of the abdomen; the shoulders and under surface of the wings, rich bluish ash-colour   ...   Numbers of this beautiful bird, for which the generic name of Kranocera* may be employed, on account of its helmet-shaped cere, were obtained on the Duke of York Island.  This bird, in the pointed form of the first primary (and general structure, except in the helmet at the base of the cere), comes nearer to members of the genus Ptilonopus in the section to which belongs P. coronulatus, &c., of the sub-genus Cyanotreron (Verr.).  In the plumage it imitates P. iozonus (G. R. Gr.).  I can find no description of this bird in any works at my disposal; nor can I find any genus in Gray's Hand-list under which I can place it.  Notwithstanding this, the bird must surely have been named and described somewhere.  Specimens have been in the Dobroyde Collection for at least six years.   ...   *Helmet-cered." (Ramsay 1877 (no specific name mentioned)); "Kranocera Ramsay, 1877, Proc. Linnean Soc. New South Wales, ser. 1, I (iv), p. 372.  Type, by subsequent designation (Salvadori, 1893, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus., XXI, p. 125), P. insolitus." (JAJ 2021).


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