Isolobodon portoricensis
The Puerto Rican hutia is an extinct species of rodent in the family Capromyidae. It was found on Hispaniola and Gonâve Island; it was introduced to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Skye McDavid · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- IsolobodonPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Echimyidae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Echimyidae
- 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.
6 occurrences of Isolobodon portoricensis on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
6 occurrences- Pleistocene79%
- Holocene21%
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.
Isolobodon portoricensis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Isolobodon portoricensis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
27 taxa- Plagiodontia aedium4 sites
- Chelonoidis marcanoi3 sites
- Nesophontes3 sites
- Acratocnus2 sites
- Anolis2 sites
- Brotomys2 sites
- Celestus2 sites
- Leiocephalus2 sites
- Plagiodontia2 sites
- Plagiodontia araeum2 sites
- Serpentes2 sites
- Aves1 site
- cf. Hyperplagodontia araeum1 site
- Crocodylus rhombifer1 site
- Hexolobodon1 site
- Hexolobodon phenax1 site
- Homo sapiens1 site
- Insulacebus toussaintiana1 site
- Megalonychidae1 site
- Neocnus1 site
- Neocnus comes1 site
- Parocnus1 site
- Quemisia gravis1 site
- Rhizoplagiodontia lemkei1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Isolobodon portoricensis, 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
4 references- A new species of extinct Late Quaternary giant tortoise from Hispaniola3
- Endemic rodents of Hispaniola: biogeography and extinction timing during the Holocene1
- The Cuban Crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer) from Late Quaternary Underwater Cave Deposits in the Dominican Republic1
- New Specimens of Late Quaternary Extinct Mammals from Caves in Sanchez Ramirez Province, Dominican Republic1
Each of the 6 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 content1
Picture of Isolobodon portoricensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Skye McDavid
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Isolobodon portoricensis was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- 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 itIsolobodon through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Flemming and MacPhee 1999