Plagiodontia araeum
Hyperplagiodontia, rarely called the wide-toothed hutia, is an extinct genus of hutia which contains a single species, Hyperplagiodontia araeum. The species was originally described as a member of the genus Plagiodontia along with the extant Hispaniolan hutia, but after morphometric analysis in 2012, was moved to its own genus, Hyperplagiodontia. Fossils of H. araeum have only been found on Hispaniola, in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

via iDigBio · via iDigBio. 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
- PlagiodontiaPBDB
- 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 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Plagiodontia araeum 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene91%
- Holocene9%
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.
Plagiodontia araeum and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Plagiodontia araeum and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
15 taxa- Acratocnus3 sites
- Anolis3 sites
- Celestus3 sites
- Chelonoidis marcanoi3 sites
- Leiocephalus3 sites
- Nesophontes3 sites
- Plagiodontia aedium3 sites
- Serpentes3 sites
- Isolobodon2 sites
- Isolobodon portoricensis2 sites
- Chelonoidis gersoni1 site
- Hexolobodon1 site
- Homo1 site
- Homo sapiens1 site
- Neocnus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Plagiodontia araeum, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 3 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. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Plagiodontia araeum
- Source
- iDigBio
- Credit
- via iDigBio
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Plagiodontia araeum was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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
- 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 itPlagiodontia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ray 1964