320 LAND MAMMALS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE 



have been so conservative and unprogressive, that they have 

 undergone comparatively little change since their earliest re- 

 corded appearance. They have been aptly termed "living 

 fossils" and seem like belated survivors from some older world, 

 out of place in the modern order of things. Attention has 

 already been directed (p. 137) to the remarkable geographical 

 distribution of the tapirs at the present time ; Central and 

 South America, southeastern Asia and the adjoining islands. 



Fig. 167. — American Tapir {Tapirus terrestris). By permission of W. S. Berridge, 



London. 



The tapirs are all of moderate size, going back to very small 

 forms at the beginning of their history and never at any period 

 developing into large animals. The only striking and un- 

 usual feature about any of the existing members of the family 

 is the long proboscis, a flexible, dependent snout, and, were 

 they all extinct and nothing known of them but the skull, 

 this proboscis could have been confidently predicated of them 

 from the great shortening of the nasal bones. Small tusks, 

 not showing when the mouth is closed, are formed in an ex- 



