1 Peso Solenodon

Cuba's wildlife conservation coin series of the early 1980s was issued primarily for the international collector market, with limited domestic circulation — a common strategy among socialist states seeking hard currency without depleting gold or silver reserves. The solenodon depicted here is the Solenodon cubanus, a venomous insectivore whose lineage diverged from other placental mammals roughly 76 million years ago. By 1981 it was already considered critically endangered, pushed to the margins of eastern Cuba by introduced predators and habitat loss.