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Copyright of Canadian Journal of Zoology is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Mammalogy is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With about 400 living species and 82 genera, rodents of the subfamily Sigmodontinae comprise one of the most diverse and more broadly distributed Neotropical mammalian clades. There has been much debate on the origin of the lineage or the lineages of sigmodontines that entered South America, the timing of entrance and different aspects of further diversification within South America. The ages of divergence of the main lineages and the crown age of the subfamily were estimated by using sequences of the interphotoreceptor retinoid binding protein and cytochrome b genes for a dense sigmodontine and muroid sampling. Bayesian inference using three fossil calibration points and a relaxed molecular clock estimated a middle Miocene origin for Sigmodontinae (∼12Ma), with most tribes diversifying throughout the Late Miocene (6.9-9.4Ma). These estimates together results of analyses of ancestral area reconstructions suggest a distribution for the most recent common ancestor of Sigmodontinae in Central-South America and a South American distribution for the most recent common ancestor of Oryzomyalia., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)