Mwalau
Mwalau walterlinii is an extinct species of megapode from Vanuatu, and the only species in the genus Mwalau. The holotype and only known specimen is from the Teouma archeological site on the island of Efate. It was built in similar proportion to the extant Australian brushturkey, and, like that species, could fly. It is distinguishable from other extant megapodes by its large size, though it is smaller than the extinct giant malleefowl.
| Mwalau Temporal range: | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Galliformes |
| Family: | Megapodiidae |
| Genus: | †Mwalau Worthy, Hawkins, Bedford & Spriggs, 2015 |
| Species: | †M. walterlinii |
| Binomial name | |
| †Mwalau walterlinii Worthy, Hawkins, Bedford & Spriggs, 2015 | |
The scientific and common name honor the first Prime Minister of Vanuatu, Walter Lini. The name of the genus comes from the Laipta name for megapodes.
References
This article uses material from the Wikipedia English article Mwalau, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.