See text Platygonus ("flat head" in reference to the straight shape of the forehead)[1] is an extinct genus of herbivorous peccaries of the family Tayassuidae, endemic to North and South America from the Miocene through Pleistocene epochs (10.3 million to 11,000 years ago), existing for about 10.289 million years.

[3][4] While long thought to be the sister-lineage to the Chacoan peccary based on morphological similarities, a 2017 ancient DNA study which recovered mitochondrial DNA from Platygonus found that all living peccaries are more closely related to each other than they are to Platygonus.

The estimated divergence between Platygonus and all living peccaries was placed in the Miocene, around 22 million years ago.

A study on the population structure of a population of P. compressus from Bat Cave, Missouri found that they had a similar demographic structure to modern peccaries, dominated by young adults, with a progressive attenuation of older adults due to predation and old-age, up to a maximum age of around 10 years.

[10]Platygonus was named by John Lawrence LeConte in 1848 for fossils found in Pleistocene karst deposits in Illinois, which are now preserved in the Academy of National Sciences in Philadelphia.