Giant hutia
The giant hutias are an extinct group of large rodents known from fossil and subfossil material in the West Indies. One species, Amblyrhiza inundata, is estimated to have weighed between, big specimens being as large as an American black bear. This is twice as large as the capybara, the largest rodent living today, but still much smaller than Josephoartigasia monesi, the largest rodent known. These animals were probably used as a food source by aboriginal humans. All giant hutias are in a single family, Heptaxodontidae, which contains no living species; this grouping seems to be paraphyletic and arbitrary, however.
One of the smaller species, Quemisia, may have survived as late as the time of the earliest Holocene.
Some of their smaller relatives from the family Capromyidae, known as hutias, survive in the Caribbean Islands.Taxonomy
The giant hutias are divided into two subfamilies, five genera, and six species.
