In 1950, Edward Alphonso Goldman identified the Barbados raccoon as a distinct species, a classification that has been challenged over the past years by other scientists, who assume that it was a subspecies of the common raccoon.
In 1950, Edward Alphonso Goldman recognized the Barbados raccoon as its own particular species, but other researchers have raised doubts about this classification, implying that it might be a smaller variant of the more widely distributed common raccoon.