''Catagonus'' is a genus of peccaries that contains the living

Chacoan peccary The Chacoan peccary or ''tagua'' (''Catagonus wagneri'' or ''Parachoerus wagneri'') is the last extant species of the genus ''Catagonus''; it is a peccary found in the Gran Chaco of Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina. Approximately 3,000 remain i ...

, C. wagneri, and several extinct species. The genus has always been restricted to

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

Taxonomy

''Catagonus'' is notable in that the type species, '' C. metropolitanus'', is extinct; the living Chacoan peccary was first described in 1930 from subfossil remains, and only found alive by scientists in 1972 (an example of a

Lazarus taxon In paleontology, a Lazarus taxon (plural ''taxa'') is a taxon that disappears for one or more periods from the fossil record, only to appear again either in later fossil records, or as actual living organisms, and often in isolated, obscure, ...

). A 2017 study on the phylogenetic systematics of

Tayassuidae Peccaries (also javelinas or skunk pigs) are pig-like ungulates of the family Tayassuidae (New World pigs). They are found throughout Central and South America, Trinidad in the Caribbean, and in the southwestern area of North America. Peccari ...

species suggests that ''Catagonus'' should only contain ''C. metropolitanus''. The extinct

narrow-headed peccary ''Catagonus stenocephalus'' is an extinct species of peccary that lived in South America during the Late Pleistocene. Fossils have been found in Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. It is commonly known as the narrow-headed peccary due to its long and m ...

''(C. stenocephalus)'' should be moved into ''Brasiliochoerus'', while the Chacoan peccary, ''C. bonaerensis'' and ''C. carlesi'' should be placed in ''Parachoerus''. If this is accepted, then ''Catagonus'' becomes an extinct genus once more.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q836112 Mammal genera Mammal genera with one living species Taxa named by Florentino Ameghino Peccaries