The International Ornithological Committee (IOC), the Clements taxonomy, and the South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society (AOS-SACC) have implemented the split making them separate species and renaming T. violaceous the Guianan trogon.

The classification schemes that treat the Amazonian trogon as a species assign two subspecies, the nominate T. r. ramonianus and T. r. crissalis.

[1][3][4][5][6] Trogons have distinctive male and female plumages, with soft, often colorful, feathers.

The female's head and face, upper breast, and upperparts are dark gray; the belly is a duller yellow than the male's, and the underside of the tail has a different pattern of black and white.

It is assumed to behave like the other "violaceus" trogons, feeding with sallies from a perch and hovering to pick insects and fruit from vegetation.

The Amazonian trogon's song is "a relatively short, fairly rapid series of clipped cow notes, or 'mewing whistles'".