Oreoscopinae

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 : 503-504

Subfamily Oreoscopinae , subfamilia nova ―fernwrens

Type genus: Oreoscopus North, 1905

Diagnosis. Small, short-tailed, long-legged songbirds densely-plumaged in olive-brown with white brow and throat, and black upper chest patch; sexes monomorphic; head slender, the bill slender and straight, tomia smooth except for slight terminal maxillary notch, and narial depression attenuately elliptic and completely operculate, with internally fully pervious nostrils opening externally as attenuately elliptic slits under the operculum, rictal bristles vestigial; skull with interorbital septum fully perforate with fine medial bar, small, weakly-winged ectethmoids not reaching jugal bar, long, terete maxillo-palatines clubbed at tips, linguate vomer with vestigial horns, narrow palatine shelf with truncated trans-palatine processes, and very small, rounded and ill-defined temporal fossae, flanked by reduced, pimple-like postorbital processes and short, acute anteriorly-projecting zygomatic processes; sternum rather narrow and narrowed distally, with shallow keel c. ⅓–½ x sternum width, lateral trabeculae slender, c. ⅓–½ x length of sternum, abruptly flared at tips, sternal rostrum moderately developed; wings short and broadly rounded, primaries 10 with p10 moderately developed, p5 and p6 longest, p7=p4> p3=p8; humeral fossae pseudo-double, the outer fossa an untrabeculated cup, the incisura capitis deep, extending into a shallow inner tricipital fossa, ventral tubercle very protuberant, and pectoral crest moderately lengthened and decurrent below fossae; tail plain, rather short and round-tipped, tail/wing ratio (0.69–)0.70–0.72(–0.74), the rectrices 12, straight-sided without terminal flaring, shallowly acute at tips; feet moderately long and slender, with booted tarsi. Nest a bulky dome with side entrance, of loosely interwoven fern rootlets, fiber, bryophytes and leaves, lined with dry moss, plant down and fur, and placed on the ground hidden among ferns on banks and under logs; eggs 2 per clutch, broadly ellipsoid, satin-white, sometimes faintly, sparsely and finely speckled with red-brown at the larger end. Terrestrial, forest-living insectivores, hop-searching in and under leaf-litter on rainforest floor; apparently monogamous.

Range and composition. Montane rainforests of northeast Queensland; one genus: Oreoscopus North, 1905 , of one species: O. gutturalis (De Vis, 1889) .