New material of Tapirus (Perissodactyla: Tapiridae) from the Pleistocene of southern Brazil

Abstract

New material of Tapirus from the late Pleistocene of Rio Grande do Sul State is described, and other specimens previously collected are reviewed. The material comes from Alegrete (Sanga da Cruz Creek), Dom Pedrito (São Luiz cattle ranch), Iraí, Quaraí (Cerro da Tapera), and Santa Vitória do Palmar (Hermenegildo Beach). The specimens from Iraí are referred to the extant species, T. terrestris, on the basis of their size and morphology. Specimens from Sanga da Cruz Creek, Hermenegildo Beach, São Luiz cattle ranch and Cerro da Tapera are very fragmentary or present no diagnostic characters, and are tentatively assigned to Tapirus cf. T. terrestris. We confirm the presence of the T. terrestris in the upper Pleistocene of Rio Grande do Sul state. Currently, there are neither archaeological nor historical records of this species for the southern region of this state.