How Would the Multituberculates Survive Longer Than in Our Timeline?

In exploring likely candidates for an alternate Earth without rodents, someone suggested multituberculates to me. Here's a little summary as to who the multituberculates were for anyone not in the know:

Multituberculata (commonly known as multituberculates, named for the multiple tubercles of their teeth) is an extinct taxon of rodent-like allotherian mammals that existed for approximately 166 million years, the longest fossil history of any mammal lineage. They eventually declined from the late Paleocene onwards, disappearing in the late Eocene, though they might have lived even longer into the Miocene, if gondwanatheres are part of this group. More than 200 species are known, ranging from mouse-sized to beaver-sized. These species occupied a diversity of ecological niches, ranging from burrow-dwelling to squirrel-like arborealism to jerboa-like hoppers.

At this idea I was hesitant towards because the multis became extinct early at the Oligocene (mid-Miocene if the gondwanatheres were multis) without us knowing how. (The popular story that they were outcompeted by rodents actually had some scientists raising their eyebrows.)

So in an alternate Earth where Rodentia never existed, in order for the multis to occupy its multiple niches instead, what adaptations must they have to survive into, at the very least, the Holocene?

posted almost 5 years ago

JohnWDailey‭

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