Related Biomes
Flat-headed Peccary
Flat-headed peccary, Platygonus compressus
Peccaries are New World relatives (family Tayssuidae) of the Old World true pigs (family Suidae). They can easily be distinguished from true pigs by the fact that their upper canines (tusks) point downward, whereas the tusks of true pigs curve upward. The flat-headed peccary is one of two species that were present in the U.S. Midwest during the last ice age, and both species have since become extinct. Currently, only the collared peccary (Tayassu tajacu) remains in the U.S., and its range is restricted from Arizona and Texas south to Argentina.
Composite skeleton of a flat-headed peccary, Platygonus compressus, from Welsh Cave, KY. On display in the Changes exhibit at the Illinois State Museum.
Height: 0.75 m (2.5 ft); Kurtén and Anderson 1980
Weight: 44.4 kg (98lb); Mendoza et al. 2006
Physical Description:
Platygonus was generally smaller than sympatric Mylohyus nasutus and its Irvingtonian ancestor, Platygonus vetus. It was approximately the size the the European wild boar, with downward pointing upper incisors (or tusks), a short, deep, snout (compared to its ancestor P. vetus). Compared to modern peccaries, P. compressus had relatively longer legs and more hypsodont (high-crowned) teeth. In the late 1970s researchers described Catagonus wagneri from the Chaco region of western Paraguay (Wetzel 1977). Morphologically, Catagonus is more similar to extinct Platygonus than it is to other living taxa. Some paleontologists consider it a "relict" species and a living representative of the Platygonus lineage.
Chacoan Peccary (Catagonus wagneri) at the Phoenix Zoo (Wikimedia Commons, Public-domain).
Flat-headed peccaries were omnivores. Dietary studies of P. compressus from southern Indiana suggest that they were mixed feeders and browsers. Small invertebrates also made up a portion of the diet (Schmidt 2008).
Unlike the long-nosed peccary, multiple individuals of flat-headed peccaries are often found, suggesting it was a herding animal. Very large samples (80 to >500 individuals) are present in Midwestern cave deposits.
P. compressus was distributed throughout North America south of the Laurentide ice sheet during the Pleistocene. Localities with large samples are present in the Ozarks, Appalacia and lower Midwest.
Few flat-headed peccary remains have been directly dated through radiocarbon analyses. Two samples from Sheridan Cave, Wyandotte Co., Ohio, date to ~11,100 14C BP (Tankersley 2011). Associated ages on microfauna from Little Beaver Cave may indicate that it is possible that flat-headed peccary survived in the Missouri Ozarks until the terminal Pleistocene as well (Schubert 2003).
Caspar Wistar first identified this extinct North American pecccary from a Kentucky cave in 1806. Flat-headed peccaries were relatively gregarious, and large numbers of peccary bones have been found in several caves in Kentucky, Missouri, and Texas. In some cases, such as Welsh Cave (KY), Bat Cave (MO), Zoo Cave (MO), and Laubach Cave (TX), these finds probably represent long-term usage of a cave by herds of peccaries. The largest known concentration of flat-headed peccary remains comes from Megenity Peccary Cave in southern Indiana, where thousands of bones have been recovered. At last count, the number of individuals in this deposit was over 500.
Finch, W. I., Whitmore, F. C., & Sims, J. D. 1972. Stratigraphy, morphology, and paleoecology of a fossil peccary herd from western Kentucky. US Government Printing Office.
Mendoza, M., Janis, C. M., Palmqvist, P. 2006. Estimating the body mass of extinct ungulates: a study on the use of multiple regression. Journal of Zoology 270(1):90-101.
Schmidt, C. W. 2008. Dental Microwear Analysis of Extinct Flat-Headed Peccary (Platygonus Compressus) from Southern Indiana. In Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science 117(2): 95-106.
Schubert, B. W. 2003. A late Pleistocene and early Holocene mammalian fauna from Little Beaver Cave, central Ozarks, Missouri. Ice Age Cave Faunas of North America. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 149-200.
Tankersley, K. B. 1999. Shereiden: A Stratified Pleistocene-Holocene Cave Site in the Great Lakes Region of North America. In Zooarchaeolgy of the Pleistocene/Holocene Boundary (J. C. Driver, Ed.). BAR International Series 800. pp. 67-75.
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