''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