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A South American tapir browsing leaves at Pouso Alegre, Transpantaneira, Poconé, Mato Grosso, Brazil. The South American tapir is an herbivore. Using its mobile nose, it feeds on leaves, buds, shoots, and small branches it tears from trees, fruit, grasses, and aquatic plants. They also feed on the vast majority of seeds found in the rainforest ...
There are four widely recognized extant species of tapir, all in the genus Tapirus of the family Tapiridae. They are the South American tapir, the Malayan tapir, Baird's tapir, and the mountain tapir. In 2013, a group of researchers said they had identified a fifth species of tapir, the kabomani tapir.
Genus Tapirus – Brisson, 1762 – four species Common name Scientific name and subspecies Range Size and ecology IUCN status and estimated population Baird's tapir. T. bairdii (Gill, 1865) Central America: Size: 180–250 cm (71–98 in) long, plus 5–13 cm (2–5 in) tail [14] Habitat: Forest, shrubland, grassland, and inland wetlands [15]
Tapiroidea is a superfamily of perissodactyls which includes the modern tapirs and their extinct relatives. Taxonomically, they are placed in suborder Ceratomorpha along with the rhino superfamily, Rhinocerotoidea.The first members of Tapiroidea appeared during the Early Eocene, 55 million years ago, and were present in North America and Asia during the Eocene.
At that time, this category also included the tapirs (Tapirus), more precisely the lowland or South American tapir (Tapirus terrestus), the only tapir then known in Europe. Linnaeus classified this tapir as Hippopotamus terrestris and put both genera in the group of the Belluae ("beasts").
Mexico, Central America and northwestern South America. South American tapir (also called the Brazilian tapir or lowland tapir) Tapirus terrestris (Linnaeus, 1758) Venezuela, Colombia, and the Guianas in the north to Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay in the south, to Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador in the West Mountain tapir (also called the woolly tapir)
Following the interchange with North America, South America's odd-toed ungulates included equids of genus Equus as well as tapirs. Equids died out in both North and South America around the time of the first arrival of humans, while tapirs died out in most of North America but survived in Central and South America.
Asian and American tapirs were believed to have diverged around 20 to 30 million years ago; and tapirs migrated from North America to South America around 3 million years ago, as part of the Great American Interchange. [39] Perissodactyls were the dominant group of large terrestrial browsers right through the Oligocene.