Taxonomy
The Cuban rock iguana's generic name Cyclura is derived from the Ancient Greek cyclos (κύκλος) meaning "circular" and ourá (οὐρά) meaning "tail", after the thick-ringed tail characteristic of all Cyclura. John Edward Gray, the British zoologist who first described the species in 1831 as Iguana (Cyclura) nubila or "Clouded Guana", gave it the specific name nubila, Latin for "cloudy".
The closest relatives of Cyclura nubila are the Grand Cayman blue iguana (Cyclura lewisi) and the Northern Bahamian rock iguana (Cyclura cychlura); phylogenetic analysis indicates that these three species diverged from a common ancestor three million years ago.
Cyclura nubila was previously considered to have three subspecies, the Grand Cayman blue iguana (termed Cyclura nubila lewisi), the Lesser Caymans iguana (Cyclura nubila caymanensis), and the nominate Cuban subspecies (Cyclura nubila nubila). This classification was revised after later mitochondrial DNA analysis and research into the scalation patterns on the heads of Caribbean iguanid lizards (these patterns are unique by species and act as a "fingerprint" of sorts). The Grand Cayman blue iguana is now recognized as a separate species.a
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