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 artificial, however.
Phoberomys pattersoni
An almost complete skeleton was discovered in the Urumaco Formation at Urumaco, Venezuela, in 2000. The new species was later classified with the name "Phoberomys pattersoni" in honor of palaeontologist Brian Patterson. From the fossil, researchers have been able to reconstruct its size and probable lifestyle. It was long, with a tail at , and probably weighed between ), making it for some years the largest known rodent for which good size and weight estimates were possible. Its congener "Phoberomys insolita" was a bit larger still, but it is not known from any reasonably complete remains, thus its size cannot be estimated more precisely.