The giant tapir (''Tapirus augustus'') is an extinct 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 inh ...

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 List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making ...

and

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

, with reports suggesting it also lived in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

, and potentially

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and e ...

. The species has been recorded from Middle and

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

. There is only weak evidence for a

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...

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 ''Tapirus'' is a genus of tapir which contains the three living American tapir species. The Malayan tapir is usually included in ''Tapirus'' as well, although some authorities have moved it into its own genus, '' Acrocodia''. Extant species Th ...

''.

Discovery and taxonomy

Despite not being named until 1923, the

Palaeontological Museum, Munich The Palaeontological Museum in Germany (''Paläontologisches Museum München''), is a German national natural history museum located in the city of Munich, Bavaria. It is associated with the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. It has a large c ...

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, Eastern Szechuan,

that come from the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), 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 fina ...

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