information:extraction, structural:expansion
Evolutionary history

Dentition is the key feature by which fossil rodents are recognized and the earliest record of such mammals comes from the Paleocene, shortly after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. These fossils are found in Laurasia, the supercontinent composed of modern-day North America, Europe, and Asia. The divergence of Glires, a clade consisting of rodents and lagomorphs (rabbits, hares and pikas), from other placental mammals occurred within a few million years after the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary; rodents and lagomorphs then radiated during the Cenozoic. Some molecular clock data suggest modern rodents (members of the order Rodentia) had appeared by the late Cretaceous, although other molecular divergence estimations are in agreement with the fossil record.

Rodents are thought to have evolved in Asia, where local multituberculate faunas were severely affected by the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event and never fully recovered, unlike their North American and European relatives. In the resulting ecological vacuum, rodents and other Glires were able to evolve and diversify, taking the niches left by extinct multituberculates. The correlation between the spread of rodents and the demise of multituberculates is a controversial topic, not fully resolved. American and European multituberculate assemblages do decline in diversity in correlation with the introduction of rodents in these areas, but the remaining Asian multituberculates co-existed with rodents with no observable replacement taking place, and ultimately both clades co-existed for at least 15 million years.

The history of the colonization of the world's continents by rodents is complex. The movements of the large superfamily Muroidea (including hamsters, gerbils, true mice and rats) may have involved up to seven colonizations of Africa, five of North America, four of Southeast Asia, two of South America and up to ten of Eurasia.

During the Eocene, rodents began to diversify. Beavers appeared in Eurasia in the late Eocene before spreading to North America in the late Miocene. Late in the Eocene, hystricognaths invaded Africa, most probably having originated in Asia at least 39.5 million years ago. From Africa, fossil evidence shows that some hystricognaths (caviomorphs) colonized South America, which was an isolated continent at the time, evidently making use of ocean currents to cross the Atlantic on floating debris. Caviomorphs had arrived in South America by 41 million years ago (implying a date at least as early as this for hystricognaths in Africa), and had reached the Greater Antilles by the early Oligocene, suggesting that they must have dispersed rapidly across South America.

Nesomyid rodents are thought to have rafted from Africa to Madagascar 20–24 million years ago. All 27 species of native Malagasy rodents appear to be descendants of a single colonization event.

By 20 million years ago, fossils recognizably belonging to the current families such as Muridae had emerged. By the Miocene, when Africa had collided with Asia, African rodents such as the porcupine began to spread into Eurasia. Some fossil species were very large in comparison to modern rodents and included the giant beaver, Castoroides ohioensis, which grew to a length of 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) and weight of 100 kg (220 lb). The largest known rodent was Josephoartigasia monesi, a pacarana with an estimated body length of 3 m (10 ft).

The first rodents arrived in Australia via Indonesia around 5 million years ago. Although marsupials are the most prominent mammals in Australia, many rodents, all belonging to the subfamily Murinae, are among the continent's mammal species. There are about fifty species of 'old endemics', the first wave of rodents to colonize the country in the Miocene and early Pliocene, and eight true rat (Rattus) species of 'new endemics', arriving in a subsequent wave in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene. The earliest fossil rodents in Australia have a maximum age of 4.5 million years, and molecular data is consistent with the colonization of New Guinea from the west during the late Miocene or early Pliocene followed by rapid diversification. A further wave of adaptive radiation occurred after one or more colonizations of Australia some 2 to 3 million years later.

Rodents participated in the Great American Interchange that resulted from the joining of the Americas by formation of the Isthmus of Panama, around 3 million years ago in the Piacenzian age. In this exchange, a small number of species such as the New World porcupines (Erethizontidae) headed north. However, the main southward invasion of sigmodontines preceded formation of the land bridge by at least several million years, probably occurring via rafting. Sigmodontines diversified explosively once in South America, although some degree of diversification may have already occurred in Central America before the colonization.