The giant tapir (Tapirus augustus)[1][2][3] is an extinct species of
tapir that lived in
southern China,
Vietnam and
Laos,[4] with reports suggesting it also lived in
Taiwan,[5]Java, and potentially
Borneo.[6] The species has been recorded from
Middle and
Late Pleistocene.[7] There is only weak evidence for a
Holocene survival.[8]Tapirus augustus was larger than any living tapir,[1] with an estimated weight of about 623 kilograms (1,373 lb).[9] The species was also placed in its own genus of Megatapirus, however, it is now conventionally placed within Tapirus.
Discovery and taxonomy
Despite not being named until 1923, the
Palaeontological Museum, Munich Paleontologist Max Schlosser described several teeth purchased from Chinese drug stores in 1903 that he assigned to Tapirus sinensis.[10] Some of the teeth had been unearthed at the Chang I locality in
Wanzhou,
Eastern Sichuan,
China that come from the
Pleistocene strata of the area.[10]Tapirus augustus was first described in 1923 William Diller Matthew and Walter Granger based on fossils found by the American Museum of Natural History during the Central Asiatic Expeditions of 1920–1930. The fossils had been recovered just a few miles from the site where many of the teeth described by Schlosser had been found.
References
^
abMatthew, William Diller; Granger, Walter; Andrews, Roy Chapman (1923). "New fossil mammals from the Pliocene of Sze-chuan, China". Bulletin of the AMNH. 48: 17.
hdl:
2246/1308.
^Tong, Haowen (January 2005). "Dental characters of the Quaternary tapirs in China, their significance in classification and phylogenetic assessment". Geobios. 38 (1): 139–150.
Bibcode:
2005Geobi..38..139T.
doi:
10.1016/j.geobios.2003.07.006.
^Turvey, Samuel T.; Tong, Haowen; Stuart, Anthony J.; Lister, Adrian M. (September 2013). "Holocene survival of Late Pleistocene megafauna in China: a critical review of the evidence". Quaternary Science Reviews. 76: 156–166.
Bibcode:
2013QSRv...76..156T.
doi:
10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.06.030.
^Maclaren, Jamie A; Hulbert, Richard C; Wallace, Steven C; Nauwelaerts, Sandra (2018-10-05). "A morphometric analysis of the forelimb in the genus Tapirus (Perissodactyla: Tapiridae) reveals influences of habitat, phylogeny and size through time and across geographical space". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 184 (2): 499–515.
doi:
10.1093/zoolinnean/zly019.