Capromys
Capromys is a genus of rodents that contains Desmarest's hutia, Garrido's hutia, and several recently extinct species, mainly from Cuba, although one extinct subspecies of Desmarest's hutia is known from Grand Cayman.

Jensflorian · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- CapromyinaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivore, carnivorePBDB, for Capromyinae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Capromyinae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
29 occurrences of Capromys on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
29 occurrences- Pleistocene49%
- Holocene51%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Capromys and its relatives
HoloceneWhere Capromys and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.
Found in the same rock
91 taxa- Geocapromys13 sites
- Nesophontes11 sites
- Cyclura nubila10 sites
- Crocodylus rhombifer8 sites
- Macrotus waterhousii8 sites
- Alsophis cantherigerus7 sites
- Anolis conspersus6 sites
- Puffinus lherminieri5 sites
- Anolis sagrei4 sites
- Aristelliger praesignis4 sites
- Athene cunicularia4 sites
- Brachyphylla nana4 sites
- Eleutherodactylus planirostris3 sites
- Erophylla sezekorni3 sites
- Ornimegalonyx oteroi3 sites
- Tyto alba3 sites
- Acratocnus antillensis2 sites
- Aquila2 sites
- Aves2 sites
- Boromys torrei2 sites
- Celestus crusculus2 sites
- Corvus nasicus2 sites
- Eptesicus fuscus2 sites
- Eudocimus albus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Capromys, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
7 references- Late Quaternary fossil vertebrates from the Cayman Islands12
- Nueva especie de ave fósil (Strigiformes: Tytonidae) del Pleistoceno superior de Cuba6
- Updated checklist of endemic terrestrial Mammals of the West Indies4
- The Cuban Crocodile, Crocodylus rhombifer, from Late Quaternary Fossil Deposits on Grand Cayman3
- The fossil avifauna of the tar seeps Las Breas de San Felipe, Matanzas, Cuba2
- The Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) from late Quaternary fossil deposits in the Bahamas and Cayman Islands1
- Recently described birds and mammals from Cuban caves1
Each of the 29 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Capromys
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jensflorian
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Capromys pilorides · ummz:mammals:77811
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Capromys”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCapromyinae through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Desmarest 1822