Topic summary
Rodentia
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Rodent.
Classification
The use of the order name "Rodentia" is attributed to the English traveler and naturalist Thomas Edward Bowdich (1821). The Modern Latin word Rodentia is derived from rōdēns, present participle of rōdere, rōdō'to gnaw, eat away'. The phylogeny of the rodents places them with the hares, rabbits, and pikas (order Lagomorpha) in the clades Glires, in Euarchontoglires and Boreoeutheria. Lagomorphs share with rodents continuously growing incisors. However, they have an additional pair of incisors in the upper jaw. The cladogram below shows some of the inner and outer relations of Rodentia based on a 2012 attempt by Wu et al. to align the molecular clock with paleontological data: