''Anthracoceros'' is a genus of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

s in the family

Bucerotidae Hornbills (Bucerotidae) are a family of bird found in tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia and Melanesia. They are characterized by a long, down-curved bill which is frequently brightly coloured and sometimes has a casque on the upper mandible ...

. The genus was introduced by the German naturalist

Ludwig Reichenbach Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach (8 January 1793 – 17 March 1879) was a German botanist and ornithologist. It was he who first requested Leopold Blaschka to make a set of glass marine invertebrate models for scientific education and museu ...

in 1849. 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 ...

was subsequently designated as the

Malabar pied hornbill The Malabar pied hornbill (''Anthracoceros coronatus''), also known as lesser pied hornbill, is a bird in the Hornbill, hornbill family, a family of tropical near-passerine birds found in the Old World. Taxonomy The Malabar pied hornbill was des ...

(''Anthracoceros coronatus''). The name is a combination of 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 peri ...

words ανθραξ ''anthrax'', ανθρακος ''anthrakos'' meaning "coal black" and κερας ''keras'', κερως ''kerōs'' meaning "horn". A

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study published in 2013 found that ''Anthracoceros'' was

sister A sister is a woman or a girl who shares one or more parents with another individual; a female sibling. The male counterpart is a brother. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to ...

to the genus ''

Ocyceros ''Ocyceros'' is a genus of birds in the family Bucerotidae. Established by Allan Octavian Hume in 1873, it contains several species that are limited to the Indian subcontinent. Description Hornbills in the genus ''Ocyceros'' are small Asian bird ...

'' which contains the three grey hornbill species. The genus contains five species:

References

Bird genera Taxa named by Ludwig Reichenbach {{Coraciiformes-stub