The spadebills are a ''genus'', ''Platyrinchus'', of Central and South American

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by th ...

birds in the tyrant flycatcher family

Tyrannidae The tyrant flycatchers (Tyrannidae) are a family of passerine birds which occur throughout North and South America. They are considered the largest family of birds known to exist in the world, with more than 400 species. They are the most diver ...

. They have broad, flat, triangular bills. The genus was erected by the French zoologist

Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest (6 March 1784 – 4 June 1838) was a French zoologist and author. He was the son of Nicolas Desmarest and father of Eugène Anselme Sébastien Léon Desmarest. Desmarest was a disciple of Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Br ...

in 1805 with the

white-crested spadebill The white-crested spadebill (''Platyrinchus platyrhynchos'') is a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. Its natural habitat is subtropi ...

(''Platyrinchus platyrhynchos'') as the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen( ...

. The name ''Platyrhynchos'' is from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

''platus'' "broad" and ''rhunkhos'' "bill".

Species

The genus contains seven species:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q938813 Platyrinchus Bird genera