Multituberculates reach their peak
The longest-lived mammal order of all time has its best moment — just before placentals push it aside.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 10 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Paleocene, Cenozoic
Multituberculates are rodent-like mammals with bladed premolars and multi-cusped molars, and they persist for over 120 million years, longer than any other mammalian order. Their diversity peaks in the Paleocene as they exploit the seeds and fruit of recovering forests. Then it turns down. The standard explanation is competitive exclusion by the rising placental herbivores and early primates, though functional tests of that hypothesis have given mixed results, and their decline may owe as much to changing forests as to competitors.