known colloquially as the “blunt toothed hutia,” this animal’s scientific name reflects a similar narrative. “"amblyrhiza"” roughly translates to “blunt root,” and “"inundata"” has been speculated to be in reference to cope’s disbelief that such a large rodent could evolve in an isolated region such as the islands of the northern lesser antilles. it is now accepted that cope thought that the animal was cosmopolitan in nature, moving freely from island to island due to the lowered sea levels of the interval, which enabled "amblyrhiza" to develop such an impressive body size. "amblyrhiza" is currently considered to be a close relative of "elasmodontomys obliquus", a smaller yet similar rodent found in the quaternary deposits of puerto rico. although it has yet to be decided exactly where "amblyrhiza" fits in a phylogenetic context, it is thought that they belong to a paraphyletic group of giant caviomorphs known as heptaxodontidae.