Living Relatives

The Chacoan peccary (Catagonus wagneri) of Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina numbers approximately 3,000 animals remaining in the wild. This is important for a number of reasons, but the most important reason for us today is that, as the closest remaining descendant (hypothesized) of Platygonus, it is a stand in for our fossil peccary. Though smaller than its extinct ancestor genus Platygonus, Catagonus shares an interesting part of its known history with Platygonus. The Chacoan peccary was initially described as an extinct animal of South American in 1930. It was not until 1971 that living examples of the peccary were found by non-native scientists. The native people of Argentina showed the animals, which they called tagua, to biologists that were in the area. This video shows images of the tagua or Chacoan peccary, which stands in for its ancestor Platygonus.