The English naturalists Hugh Edwin Strickland and Alexander Gordon Melville suggested the common descent of the Rodrigues solitaire and the dodo in 1848. They dissected the only known dodo specimen with soft tissue, comparing it with the few Rodrigues solitaire remains then available. Strickland stated that, although not identical, these birds shared many distinguishing features in the leg bones otherwise only known in pigeons. The fact that the Rodrigues solitaire laid only one egg, fed on fruits, was monogamous and cared for its nestlings also supported this relationship. Strickland recognised its generic distinction and named the new genus "Pezophaps", from ancient Greek ' ( 'pedestrian') and ' ( 'pigeon'). The differences between the sexes of the bird were so large that Strickland thought they belonged to two species, naming the smaller female bird "Pezophaps minor".