A taxonomic and biogeographic review of the fossil tapirs from Bolivia

FERRERO, B.; SOIBELZON, E.; HOLANDA, E.; GASPARINI, G. M.; ZURITA, A. E; MIÑO-BOILINI, A.R.

ACTA PALAEONTOLOGICA POLONICA

INST PALEOBIOLOGII PAN

Lugar: Varsovia; Año: 2014 vol. 59 p. 505 - 516

0567-7920

The fossil remains of South American tapirs are often fragmentary and scarce when compared with the remains of other mammals that entered South America during the ?Great American Biotic Interchange?. The earliest South American records of Tapirus are certainly known from the early-middle Pleistocene, in sediments outcropping in the Pampean region of Argentina. Recent studies of fossil tapirs have included new records, comparative descriptions and phylogenetic relationships. The amount of findings has substantially increased in recent times, and thus the description and characterization of new samples. These scientific advances have provided a favorable context for a revision and a deeper discussion of the tapirs found in Tarija Valley (Bolivia), adding to the poorly known specimens others that are unpublished. For these reasons, we describe and compare the Pleistocene fossil tapirs found in the Tarija Valley; including a re-evaluation of the diagnostic characters of Tapirus tarijensis; we discuss the taxonomic treatment of other authors for this taxon and make comments regarding the geographical distribution of the genus during the Pleistocene in South America. The studied specimens indicate that T. tarijensis is, so far, the only species that inhabited the Tarija Valley. Based on morphometric studies, we characterize the species T. tarijensis as a large-sized taxon, close to the size range of the Malaysian living species T. indicus and to the North American fossil species T. haysii