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The mid-Tertiary Ctenodactylidae, a profusely ramified rodent of eastern and central Asia, is thoroughly revised based on collections from the Hsanda Gol Formation made in the 1920s by the Third Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, as well as on relatively recently collected material from China. Leptotataromys, Muratkhanomys, and Roborovskia are all synonyms of Tataromys. The species formerly referred to Tataromys are divided into four genera: Tataromys, Yindirtemys, Bounomys, and Euryodontomys, new genus. Thus Tataromys includes only four species: T. plicidens, T. sigmodon, T. minor, and T. parvus, new species. Some species referred to Tataromys (T. grangeri, T. deflexus, T. suni, T. gobiensis, T. cf. T. plicidens, T. cf. T sigmodon of Bohlin (1946) and Zhai (1978), T. cf. T. grangeri, and some Tataromys species) are assigned to Yindirtemys. T. bohlini (partim) and T. ulantatalensis are allotted to Bounomys. T. cf. T. sigmodon and T. bohlini (partim) of Huang (1985) belong to a new genus, Euryodontomys.
The mid-Tertiary Ctenodactylidae of Asia falls into four lineages, here considered as four subfamilies. Tataromyinae includes Tataromys, Yindirtemys, and Bounomys; Karakoromys is considered not only a valid genus, but also the representative of a subfamily, Karakoromyinae, which is composed of Karakoromys and Euryodontomys; Ctenodactylinae includes Sayimys, some other fossil genera from the Neogene and Pleistocene, and the living ctenodactylids. This subfamily is thought to be more closely related to the Karakoromyinae than to the Tataromyinae. The family Distylomyidae is here reduced to subfamily rank, Distylomyinae, the sister group of the Ctenodactylinae. Among the four subfamilies, the Tataromyinae, which abruptly flourished during the mid-Tertiary, became extinct by the end of the middle Miocene. On the other hand, the Ctenodactylinae survived and migrated into southern Asia, the Mediterranean area, and North Africa. Now they still survive and live only in North and East Africa. Evolution, radiation, migration, and extinction of the Ctenodactylidae are discussed. The main influential factors are interpreted to be climatic and topographic changes within the Palearctic Region from Eocene through Miocene times.
