The giant tapir (''Tapirus augustus'') is an extinct species of tapir that lived in southern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, Vietnam and

Laos Laos (, ''Lāo'' )), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, French: République démocratique populaire lao), is a socialist ...

, with reports suggesting it also lived in Taiwan, Java, and potentially Borneo. The species has been recorded from

Middle Middle or The Middle may refer to: * Centre (geometry), the point equally distant from the outer limits. Places * Middle (sheading), a subdivision of the Isle of Man * Middle Bay (disambiguation) * Middle Brook (disambiguation) * Middle Creek (d ...

and

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ...

. There is only weak evidence for a Holocene survival. ''Tapirus augustus'' was significantly larger than any living tapir, with an estimated weight of about . 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''.Hooijer, D. A. (1947)
On fossil and prehistoric remains of Tapirus from Java, Sumatra and China.
''Zoologische Mededelingen'', ''27''(3), 253-299. Some of the teeth had been unearthed at the Chang I locality in

Wanhsien Wanzhou District () is Chongqing's second most populated urban core area on the upper reaches of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River in China. It is currently governed as a district of Chongqing Municipality, bordering Sichuan to the northw ...

, Eastern Szechuan,

that come from the Pleistocene strata of the area. ''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

Prehistoric tapirs Pleistocene odd-toed ungulates Holocene extinctions Pleistocene mammals of Asia Fossil taxa described in 1923 {{paleo-oddtoedungulate-stub