A new species of Celebochoerus (Suidae, Mammalia) from the Philippines and the paleobiogeography of the genus Celebochoerus Hooijer, 1948

Celebochoerus is a unique suid having extremely large upper tusks, and which was to date only known from the Pliocene-Pleistocene of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia. Here, we report on the discovery of a canine fragment referable to Celebochoerus from the Cagayan Valley of Luzon, Northern Philippines. We name a new species, Celebochoerus cagayanensis nov. sp., which differs from the Sulawesi species Celebochoerus heekereni in having mesial and distal enamel bands on the upper canines. We see these characteristics as symplesiomorphic in suids and propose a migration route from the Philippines to Sulawesi, possibly out of Taiwan, which would have occurred independently from the better known Pleistocene migration route from India into Java.