''Tapirus copei'', or Cope's tapir, is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

species of

tapir Tapirs ( ) are large, herbivorous mammals belonging to the family Tapiridae. They are similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile nose trunk. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South and Central America, with one species inhabit ...

that inhabited

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

during the early to middle

Pleistocene Epoch The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

(~2.5–1 Ma). The fossil remains of two juvenile ''T. copei'' were collected in Hillsborough County, Florida on August 31, 1963. It was the second largest North American tapir; the first being '' T. merriami''.

Taxonomy

There are multiple pieces of evidence which indicate most, if not all, of the 5 accepted Pleistocene tapir species found in North America ('' T. californicus'', ''T. haysii'' (''T. copei''), '' T. lundeliusi'', '' T. merriami'', '' T. veroensis'') may actually belong to the same species. ''T. californicus'' was considered to be a subspecies of ''T. haysii'' by Merriam, ''T. californicus'' and ''T. veroensis'' are nearly impossible to distinguish morphologically and occupy the same time frame, being separated only by location, and ''T. haysii'', ''T. veroensis'', and ''T. lundeliusi'' are already considered so closely related that they occupy the same subgenus (''Helicotapirus''). Additionally, few details distinguish ''T. haysii'' and ''T. veroensis'' except size, date, and wear of teeth; and the intermediate sizes overlap greatly with many specimens originally assigned to one species, then later switched over to another.

References

Prehistoric tapirs Quaternary mammals of North America Fossil taxa described in 1945 {{paleo-oddtoedungulate-stub