Tapiroidea

views updated

Tapiroidea (order Perissodactyla, suborder Ceratomorpha) A superfamily that comprises the family Tapiridae together with a number of ceratomorphs known from the Eocene and Oligocene and arranged in several small families. Many of these families constituted evolutionary branches from the lines leading to the modern ceratomorphs, but some were ancestral to Protapirus, a true tapir which lived in the Oligocene; and Hyrachyus was one of several Eocene forms that may be ancestral to rhinoceroses.