''Catagonus'' is a genus of peccaries that contains the living
Chacoan peccary and several extinct species. The genus has always been restricted to
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
.
Taxonomy
''Catagonus'' is notable in that the type species, ''
C. metropolitanus'', is extinct; the living Chacoan peccary was first described in 1930 from subfossil remains, and only found alive by scientists in 1972 (an example of a
Lazarus taxon
In paleontology, a Lazarus taxon (plural ''taxa'') is a taxon that disappears for one or more periods from the fossil record, only to appear again later. Likewise in conservation biology and ecology, it can refer to species or populations tha ...
).
A 2017 study on the phylogenetic systematics of
Tayassuidae species suggests that ''Catagonus'' should only contain ''C. metropolitanus''. The extinct
narrow-headed peccary ''(C. stenocephalus)'' should be moved into ''Brasiliochoerus'', while the Chacoan peccary, ''C. bonaerensis'' and ''C. carlesi'' should be placed in ''Parachoerus''.
If this is accepted, then ''Catagonus'' becomes an extinct genus once more.
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q836112
Mammal genera
Mammal genera with one living species
Taxa named by Florentino Ameghino
Peccaries