Clock Calibration Research Articles

Fossil-calibrated time tree of Podarcis wall lizards provides limited support for biogeographic calibration models

Podarcis wall lizards are endemic to the Mediterranean Basin where they represent the predominant reptile group. Despite being extensively used as model organisms in evolutionary and ecological studies their phylogeny and historical biogeography are still incompletely resolved. Moreover, molecular clock calibrations used in wall lizard phylogeography are based on the assumption of vicariant speciation triggered by the abrupt Mediterranean Sea level rise at the end of the Messinian salinity crisis (MSC). However, the validity of this biogeographic calibration remains untested. In this study we inferred a robust time tree based on multilocus data and fossil calibrations using both gene concatenation and species-tree approaches and including models with gene-flow. We found five deeply divergent, geographically coherent, and well-supported clades comprising species from i) Iberian Peninsula and North Africa; ii) Western Mediterranean islands, iii) Sicilian and Maltese islands; and iv-v) Balkan region and Aegean islands. The mitochondrial tree shows some inconsistencies with the species tree that warrant future investigation. Diversification of main clades is estimated in a short time frame during the Middle Miocene and might have been associated with a period of global climate cooling with the establishment of a marked climatic zonation in Europe. Cladogenetic events within the main clades are scattered throughout the time tree, from the Late Miocene to the Early Pleistocene, suggesting that speciation events in wall lizards reflect a complex interplay between regional topography, climate and geological history rather than a shared major climatic or paleogeographic event. Our absolute time estimates, as well as a relative dating approach, demonstrate that the assumption of a causal link between sea-level rise at the end of the MSC and the diversification of many island endemics is not justified. This study reinforces the notion that multiple dispersal and vicariant events, at different time frames, are required to explain current allopatric distributions and to account for the historical assembly of Mediterranean biota, and cautions against the use of biogeographic calibrations based on the assumption of vicariance.

A 100‐Million‐Year Gap in the Knowledge of the Evolutionary History of Bromeliaceae: A Brief Review of Fossil Records

Bromeliaceae arose in the Early Cretaceous, diverging from Typhaceae at ca. 125 Ma. After an apparent evolutionary stasis of 100 million years, they have undergone a high diversification starting in the Miocene. By adding fossils to the phylogenies, one can infer dates of arising and the divergence of lineages and link them to geological and climatic events. The use of reliable fossils, therefore, can greatly impact the results and interpretation of bromeliads evolution. Here, we present a literature review of the fossils assigned to Bromeliaceae and discuss the gap in the knowledge of these plants’ evolutionary history in the light of the poor fossil record. Our survey shows that Karatophyllum bromelioides, from the Pleistocene, is the only reliable fossil among the few fossils assigned to the group. Protananaceae has been proposed since 2005 as a sister group of Bromeliaceae; however, no work has corroborated this placement so far. The lack of information in fossil records contributes to the unsolved evolutionary questions between the rise and diversification of the bromeliads. These aspects influence molecular clock calibration and consequently phylogenetic and biogeographical inferences, requiring an alternative calibration. Additional findings may improve our knowledge by revealing new macro/microfossils for Bromeliaceae.

The molecular systematics and diversification of a taxonomically unstable group of Asian cicada tribes related to Cicadini Latreille, 1802 (Hemiptera : Cicadidae)

The cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) related to tribe Cicadini exhibit some of the most remarkable phenotypes in the family, with many genera possessing striking colour patterns and unusual morphological features. This largely Asian group of 13 tribes has proven challenging for cicada taxonomists, in part because of likely convergent evolution or losses of these phenotypes. We present the first focused molecular phylogeny of this clade, including ~60 described genera. The genetic dataset contains 839 ingroup-informative sites (out of 2575) from mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I, nuclear elongation factor-1 α, and nuclear acetyltransferase. We use Bayesian and maximum likelihood trees to test recent changes in tribe- and subtribe-level classification, and we reconstruct ancestral character states for potentially convergent traits influencing tribe descriptions. We use fossil and molecular clock calibrations to estimate the temporal and geographic context of the radiation. The tribes Gaeanini, Leptopsaltriini, Platypleurini, Psithyristriini, and Tosenini appear polyphyletic and in need of revision, in part because of convergent evolution of opaque wings and multiple convergent gains or losses of abdominal tubercles. Kalabita Moulton, 1923 is transferred from Platypleurini to Leptopsaltriini. Vittagaeana gen. nov. is established for Vittagaeana paviei comb. nov. and Vittagaeana dives comb. nov., formerly in Tosena. Sinosenini syn. nov. is synonymised with Dundubiina. Ayuthiini trib. nov. is established with two new subtribes for Ayuthia Distant, 1919 and Distantalna Boulard, 2009, formerly in Tosenini. For the earliest split in the tree, one common ancestor appears to have been Indian + Asian in geographic distribution and the other Asian. We estimate that the radiation began in the middle Cenozoic Era, possibly as recently as the early Miocene. The recent and steady pattern of diversification suggests that refinement of tribe diagnoses will prove challenging. http://zoobank.org:urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:5A6C16F4-5269-453B-BA5C-B29C3394683A

Fast Digital Clock Calibration of a Differential 6.4 Gb/s/pin Bidirectional Asymmetric Memory Interface

A differential 6.4 Gb/s/pin bidirectional asymmetric memory interface with a fast all-digital clock calibration method is presented. The proposed clock calibration reduces the link training time of the interface compared to the conventional data eye detection by eliminating the need to sweep the receiver clock phase. Instead a scalable synthesized phase-to-digital converter (PDC) is used to measure the offset from the ideal 90° shift while a clock pattern is transmitted. Phase interpolator nonlinearity is compensated in an additional adjustment step in order to minimize the clock centering error. A prototype ASIC which can be configured to act as either a controller or a memory device was fabricated in a 65nm CMOS process and tested. The measured read and write training durations are 3.1 $\mu \text{s}$ and 3.3 $\mu \text{s}$ , respectively. The additional area required for the PDC in each transceiver is 0.004mm2.

Inferring Evolutionary Timescales without Independent Timing Information: An Assessment of "Universal" Insect Rates to Calibrate a Collembola (Hexapoda) Molecular Clock.

Previous estimates of nucleotide substitution rates are routinely applied as secondary or “universal” molecular clock calibrations for estimating evolutionary timescales in groups that lack independent timing information. A major limitation of this approach is that rates can vary considerably among taxonomic groups, but the assumption of rate constancy is rarely evaluated prior to using secondary rate calibrations. Here I evaluate whether an insect mitochondrial DNA clock is appropriate for estimating timescales in Collembola—a group of insect-like arthropods characterized by high levels of cryptic diversity. Relative rates of substitution in cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COI) were inferred via Bayesian analysis across a topologically constrained Hexapod phylogeny using a relaxed molecular clock model. Rates for Collembola did not differ significantly from the average rate or from the rates estimated for most other groups (25 of 30), suggesting that (1) their apparent cryptic diversity cannot be explained by accelerated rates of molecular evolution and (2) clocks calibrated using “universal” insect rates may be appropriate for estimating evolutionary timescales in this group. However, of the 31 groups investigated, 10 had rates that deviated significantly from the average (6 higher, 4 lower), underscoring the need for caution and careful consideration when applying secondary insect rate calibrations. Lastly, this study exemplifies a relatively simple approach for evaluating rate constancy within a taxonomic group to determine whether the use of secondary rates are appropriate for molecular clock calibrations.

Digital-Twin-Enabled Intelligent Distributed Clock Synchronization in Industrial IoT Systems

Tight cooperation among distributively connected equipment and infrastructures of an Industrial-Internet-of-Things (IIoT) system hinges on low latency data exchange and accurate time synchronization within sophisticated networks. However, the temperature-induced clock drift in connected industry facilities constitutes a fundamental challenge for conventional synchronization techniques due to dynamic industrial environments. Furthermore, the variation of packet delivery latency in IIoT networks hinders the reliability of time information exchange, leading to deteriorated clock synchronization performance in terms of synchronization accuracy and network resource consumption. In this article, a digital-twin-enabled model-based scheme is proposed to achieve an intelligent clock synchronization for reducing resource consumption associated with distributed synchronization in fast-changing IIoT environments. By leveraging the digital-twin-enabled clock models at remote locations, required interactions among distributed IIoT facilities to achieve synchronization is dramatically reduced. The virtual clock modeling in advance of the clock calibrations helps to characterize each clock so that its behavior under dynamic operating environments is predictable, which is beneficial to avoiding excessive synchronization-related timestamp exchange. An edge-cloud collaborative architecture is also developed to enhance the overall system efficiency during the development of remote digital-twin models. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can create an accurate virtual model remotely for each local clock according to the information gathered. Meanwhile, a significant enhancement on the clock accuracy is accomplished with dramatically reduced communication resource consumption in networks with different packet delay variations.

A 112-Gb/s PAM-4 Long-Reach Wireline Transceiver Using a 36-Way Time-Interleaved SAR ADC and Inverter-Based RX Analog Front-End in 7-nm FinFET

A 36-way time-interleaved 56-GS/s 7-bit ADC is designed to realize 112-Gb/s pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM-4) transceiver in a 7-nm FinFET CMOS. The receiver analog front-end stages and the ADC track-and-hold (T/H) buffers are implemented using inverter-based Gm/inverse-Gm-load cells. A distributed inductor peaking network and multi-phase clock calibration is implemented in the quarter-rate transmitter. The transceiver achieves <1E-8 pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS)-31 PAM-4 bit error rate (BER) over a channel with 37.5-dB loss at 28 GHz while dissipating 602 mW per channel, excluding DSP.

Fiber Bragg grating sensing system with wavelength-swept-laser distribution and self-synchronization.

Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) with various interrogation schemes to estimate the FBG's spectrum shift have been widely used in fiber sensing systems. Wavelength swept laser (WSL) based interrogation architectures have been proposed to offer rapid and high-quality sensing performance. However, for getting higher sensing accuracy, the demands for high-performance WSL may push the system cost. Under these considerations, a WSL distribution architecture allowing multiple sensing processing units (SPUs) to share the WSL is studied in this Letter. A self-synchronization scheme is proposed to enable flexible SPU deployment with no concerns for the clock calibration. The proposed system is experimentally studied. Temperature estimation error of ∼2.5∘C and ∼0.5∘C with sensitivities of 0.13°C/ms and 0.14°C/ms, respectively, for the high and small temperature ranges are demonstrated.

A −20 dBm Passive UHF RFID Tag IC With MTP NVM in 0.13-μm Standard CMOS Process

A fully integrated passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RF identification (RFID) tag integrated circuit (IC) based on Chinese UHF RFID standard (GJB 7377.1) is proposed. An optimized voltage multiplier with threshold compensation and leakage current suppression is designed to improve the RF-DC power conversion efficiency, which is more than 58% for different load current. A system clock constraint condition and proposed digital baseband (BB) algorithm instead of clock calibration is introduced to ensure correct demodulation of the forward link from reader to tag and back link frequency (BLF) tolerance from tag to reader. Moreover, a 2Kb multi-time programmable (MTP) non-volatile memory (NVM) in standard CMOS process without any additional masks and process modification is designed and implemented to significantly save the manufacture cost of the chip. The proposed RFID tag IC is fabricated using a $0.13-\mu \text{m}$ one-poly-five-metal (1P5M) standard CMOS process with an area of $620\times 660\,\,\mu \text{m}^{2}$ and a power consumption of 4.8 $\mu \text{W}$ and 11.5 $\mu \text{W}$ for reading and writing operations, respectively. The tag with antenna gain of 2 dBi shows successful reading detection at distances up to 17 m in the case of 4 W Equivalent Isotropically Radiated Power (EIRP) from reader.

AKURASI WAKTU JAM MASJID DI KOTA LHOKSEUMAWE

Accuracy of time is very closely related to Islamic law, a lot of worship related to time, such as prayer times, breaking fast and ruling. Without a standard time accuracy, worship can not be done perfectly. The clock is a marker of time that makes it easy for Muslims to carry out worship and social activities. Until now there has been no clock that can survive accuracy with a long time, meaning that all clocks must be calibrated within a certain time span. The time standard for clock calibration is the Atomic Clock time that is on the GPS or on the link http://ntp.bmkg.go.id/Jam.BMKG controlled by Badan Meteorologi Klimatologi dan Geofisika (BMKG). This study tries to find the accuracy of mosque hours and the type of clock used in mosques in Lhokseumawe City by using the method of observation and documentation of 20 mosques selected as samples in the study. The results of observation and documentation show that all mosques (100%) in Kota Lhokseumawe have used the clock as a timemarker, 12 mosques, or 60% of the mosque has been using a digital clock with accuracy of 50% in accordance with the standard and 35% analog clock in accordance with a clock standard observer BMKG.Keywords: Time System, Global Positioning System (GPS), Mosque and Lhokseumawe.

Evidence of Late Miocene Peri-Tibetan Aridification From the Oldest Asian Species of Sandgrouse (Aves: Pteroclidae)

The partial skeleton of a new extinct taxon, Linxiavis inaquosus, from the Liushu Formation (6-9 Ma) at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau in Gansu Province, China is the most substantial known fossil record of sandgrouse (Pteroclidae). While adding to the rapidly growing known Liushu avian fauna of vultures, falcons, pheasants, and ostrich, this new fossil is likely the oldest record of crown Pteroclidae (as a potential molecular clock calibration point), the oldest record of the group in Asia (from a probable African origin), and derives from a significant temporal gap in their Neogene history. The fossil specimen includes articulated and associated elements of the wings, shoulder girdle, vertebrae, and hind limb, exhibiting apomorphies of Columbiformes and Pteroclidae such as a notarium, and a short coracoid shaft. As part of the Linxia Basin’s diverse Hipparion fauna, Pterocles inaquosus reinforces the interpretation of the habitat as an arid savannah, associated with the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. The holotype suggests that the arid high elevation Tibetan area habitats may have been continuously occupied since the late Miocene by sandgrouse carrying water in their modified breast feathers to their young.

Mountains as Islands: Species Delimitation and Evolutionary History of the Ant-Loving Beetle Genus Panabachia (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae) from the Northern Andes.

The ant-loving beetle genus Panabachia Park 1942 is a poorly studied beetle lineage from the new world tropics. We recently collected Panabachia from several previously unrecorded locations in the páramo biome of the high Ecuadorian Andes, with males exhibiting great morphological variation in the distribution of the foveae and depressions in the pronotum, as well as aspects of the male genitalia. Here, we employ phylogenetic and species delimitation methods with mitochondrial (COI) and nuclear protein-coding (wingless) gene sequences to examine the concordance of morphological characters and geography with hypothesized species boundaries. Three methods of species delimitation (bPTP, GMYC and Stacey) were used to estimate the number of species, and divergence times between putative species using molecular clock calibration. Phylogenetic analysis revealed two parallel radiations, and species delimitation analyses suggest there are between 17 and 22 putative species. Based on clade support and concordance across species delimitation methods we hypothesize 17 distinct clusters, with allopatric speciation consistent with most geographic patterns. Additionally, a widespread species appears to be present in northern páramo sites, and some sister species sympatry may indicate other diversification processes have operated on certain lineages of Panabachia. Divergence time estimates suggest that Panabachia originated in the Miocene, but most species analyzed diverged during the Pliocene and Pleistocene (5.3–0.11 Mya), contemporaneous with the evolution of páramo plant species.

Phylogeography and demographic history of Gyrodactylus konovalovi (Monogenoidea: Gyrodactylidae), an ectoparasite on the East Asia Amur minnow (Cyprinidae) in Central China.

Gyrodactylus konovalovi is an ectoparasite on the Amur minnow (Rhynchocypris lagowskii) that is widely distributed in the cold fresh waters of East Asia. In the present study, the phylogeography and demographic history of G. konovalovi and the distribution of its host in the Qinling Mountains are examined. A total of 79 individual parasites was sequenced for a 528 bp region of the mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase subunit 5 (ND5) gene, and 25 haplotypes were obtained. The substitution rate (dN/dS) was 0.068 and indicated purifying selection. Haplotype diversity (h) and nucleotide diversity (π) varied widely in the Qinling Mountains. Phylogenetic trees based on Bayesian inference (BI), maximum likelihood (ML), and maximum parsimony (MP) methods and network analysis revealed that all haplotypes were consistently well‐supported in three different lineages, indicating a significant geographic distribution pattern. There was a significant positive correlation between genetic differentiation (F st) and geographic distance. The results of mismatch distribution, neutrality test and Bayesian skyline plot analyses showed that whole populations underwent population contraction during the Pleistocene. Based on the molecular clock calibration, the most common ancestor was estimated to have emerged in the middle Pleistocene. Our study suggests for the first time that a clearly phylogeography of G. konovalovi was shaped by geological events and climate fluctuations, such as orogenesis, drainage capture changes, and vicariance, during the Pleistocene in the Qinling Mountains.

A Sub-mW On-Chip Period-Jitter Measurement Circuit Using Automatic Hidden Runtime Resolution Calibration

It is challenging to design an on-chip jitter measurement circuit (OCJM) for complex systems-on-chip (SoCs) with high resolution at low power that is resilient to PVT variations. In this work, an approximate period-to-digital converter (APDC) and a parameter-extraction and resolution-calibration circuit (PERC) are proposed for use in an OCJM to achieve the design goals of high resolution without a reference clock and automatic hidden runtime resolution calibration for high PVT-variation resilience. The measurement results of a 28-nm test chip show that a 1.0-ps resolution specification can definitely be met at different PVT corners during runtime. The measurement results from 15 chips show that the OCJM is resilient to chip-to-chip variations. The proposed OCJM consumes 0.95 mW, which corresponds to 8% of the power consumption in a state-of-the-art stochastic time-to-digital-based OCJM reimplemented with the same CMOS technology.

A review of rare and less well known extant marine organic-walled dinoflagellate cyst taxa of the orders Gonyaulacales and Suessiales from the Northern Hemisphere

Abstract Dinoflagellate resting cysts with rare exception produce the only discrete link between the biology of extant dinoflagellate species and their fossil record. The geological preservability of such cysts allows them to be used for quantitative paleoecological reconstructions, especially in the Quaternary, and for biostratigraphy and the calibration of molecular clocks with the geological record. This contribution reviews and updates the taxonomy of 27 uncommon dinoflagellate cyst species and morphotypes belonging to the orders Gonyaulacales and Suessiales with occurrences in upper Quaternary marine sediments of the Northern Hemisphere. Comparative descriptions and illustrations are provided along with the biological affinity of each taxon where known and lowest stratigraphic occurrence.

The fossil record of spiders revisited: implications for calibrating trees and evidence for a major faunal turnover since the Mesozoic.

Studies in evolutionary biology and biogeography increasingly rely on the estimation of dated phylogenetic trees using molecular clocks. In turn, the calibration of such clocks is critically dependent on external evidence (i.e. fossils) anchoring the ages of particular nodes to known absolute ages. In recent years, a plethora of new fossil spiders, especially from the Mesozoic, have been described, while the number of studies presenting dated spider phylogenies based on fossil calibrations increased sharply. We critically evaluate 44 of these studies, which collectively employed 67 unique fossils in 180 calibrations. Approximately 54% of these calibrations are problematic, particularly regarding unsupported assignment of fossils to extant clades (44%) and crown (rather than stem) dating (9%). Most of these cases result from an assumed equivalence between taxonomic placement of fossils and their phylogenetic position. To overcome this limitation, we extensively review the literature on fossil spiders, with a special focus on putative synapomorphies and the phylogenetic placement of fossil species with regard to their importance for calibrating higher taxa (families and above) in the spider tree of life. We provide a curated list including 41 key fossils intended to be a basis for future estimations of dated spider phylogenies. In a second step, we use a revised set of 23 calibrations to estimate a new dated spider tree of life based on transcriptomic data. The revised placement of key fossils and the new calibrated tree are used to resolve a long-standing debate in spider evolution-we tested whether there has been a major turnover in the spider fauna between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. At least 17 (out of 117) extant families have been recorded from the Cretaceous, implying that at least 41 spider lineages in the family level or above crossed the Cretaeous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary. The putative phylogenetic affinities of families known only from the Mesozoic suggest that at least seven Cretaceous families appear to have no close living relatives and might represent extinct lineages. There is no unambiguous fossil evidence of the retrolateral tibial apophysis clade (RTA-clade) in the Mesozoic, although molecular clock analyses estimated the major lineages within this clade to be at least ∼100 million years old. Our review of the fossil record supports a major turnover showing that the spider faunas in the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic are very distinct at high taxonomic levels, with the Mesozoic dominated by Palpimanoidea and Synspermiata, while the Cenozoic is dominated by Araneoidea and RTA-clade spiders.

Frequency stability analysis of pulsar‐aided clocks

This paper discusses the use of a pulsar signal in clock calibration. The analysis method is presented from the perspective of filtering theory, where Hadamard variance is used to analyze the frequency stability of both the stand-alone and the pulsar-aided clock systems. The aided clock is constructed using a steady state Kalman filter and accounts for the fractional power spectral density of the pulsar timing noise. The results of this simplified analysis indicate that the frequency stability of the aided clock has noticeable improvement at large averaging time due to the suppression of the random walk frequency noise in the stand-alone clock.

Is reproductive strategy a key factor in understanding the evolutionary history of Southern Ocean Asteroidea (Echinodermata)?

Life traits such as reproductive strategy can be determining factors of species evolutionary history and explain the resulting diversity patterns. This can be investigated using phylogeographic analyses of genetic units. In this work, the genetic structure of five asteroid genera with contrasting reproductive strategies (brooding: Diplasterias, Notasterias and Lysasterias versus broadcasting: Psilaster and Bathybiaster) was investigated in the Southern Ocean. Over 1,400 mtDNA cytochrome C oxidase subunit I (COI) sequences were analysed using five species delineation methods (ABGD, ASAP, mPTP, sGMYC and mGMYC), two phylogenetic reconstructions (ML and BA), and molecular clock calibrations, in order to examine the weight of reproductive strategy in the observed differences among phylogeographic patterns. We hypothesised that brooding species would show higher levels of genetic diversity and species richness along with a clearer geographic structuring than broadcasting species. In contrast, genetic diversity and species richness were not found to be significantly different between brooders and broadcasters, but broadcasters are less spatially structured than brooders supporting our initial hypothesis and suggesting more complex evolutionary histories associated to this reproductive strategy. Broadcasters' phylogeography can be explained by different scenarios including deep‐sea colonisation routes, bipolarity or cosmopolitanism, and sub‐Antarctic emergence for the genus Bathybiaster; Antarctic‐ New Zealand faunal exchanges across the Polar Front for the genus Psilaster. Brooders' phylogeography could support the previously formulated hypothesis of a past trans‐Antarctic seaway established between the Ross and the Weddell seas during the Plio‐Pleistocene. Our results also show, for the first time, that the Weddell Sea is populated by a mixed asteroid fauna originating from both the East and West Antarctic.

An All-Digital On-Chip Peak-to-Peak Jitter Measurement Circuit With Automatic Resolution Calibration for High PVT-Variation Resilience

A new, all-digital on-chip peak-to-peak (p-p) jitter measurement circuit (OCJM) that features automatic resolution calibration for high PVT-variation resilience without a reference clock and off-line calibration is presented in this paper. The OCJM uses a front-end self-referenced circuit (SRC) to eliminate the jitter-free reference signal and a back-end p-p jitter detector (PPD) to perform p-p jitter measurements. The key design of the proposed OCJM is that the SRC and the PPD share a Vernier delay line (VDL) so that the run-time PVT information automatically extracted from the SRC operation can be carried onto the PPD to achieve automatic on-line resolution calibration. Besides this feature, the OCJM uses on-chip direct p-p jitter measurement with only 1-time readouts to eliminate the huge power consumption of the off-chip data communication while avoiding data loss of a possible large jitter caused by PVT variations during off-chip data communication. These techniques make the proposed OCJM suitable for any-time, any-site jitter measurements for SoC applications. The proposed OCJM is fabricated in a 28-nm CMOS. The measurement results show that the timing resolution and minimum measurable jitter range specifications are met under extreme PVT conditions while achieving 98% clock cycle and energy reduction compared to the conventional OCJM designs.

A journey on plate tectonics sheds light on European crayfish phylogeography.

Crayfish can be used as model organisms in phylogeographic and divergence time studies if reliable calibrations are available. This study presents a comprehensive investigation into the phylogeography of the European stone crayfish (Austropotamobius torrentium) and includes samples from previously unstudied sites. Two mitochondrial markers were used to reveal evolutionary relationships among haplogroups throughout the species’ distributional range and to estimate the divergence time by employing both substitution rates and geological calibration methods. Our haplotype network reconstruction and phylogenetic analyses revealed the existence of a previously unknown haplogroup distributed in Romania's Apuseni Mountains. This haplogroup is closely related to others that are endemic in the Dinarides, despite their vast geographical separation (~600 km). The separation is best explained by the well‐dated tectonic displacement of the Tisza–Dacia microplate, which started in the Miocene (~16 Ma) and possibly carried part of the A. torrentium population to the current location of the Apuseni Mountains. This population may thus have been isolated from the Dinarides for a period of ca. 11 m.y. by marine and lacustrine phases of the Pannonian Basin. The inclusion of this geological event as a calibration point in divergence time analyses challenges currently accepted crayfish evolutionary time frames for the region, constraining the evolution of this area's crayfish to a much earlier date. We discuss why molecular clock calibrations previously employed to date European crayfish species divergences should therefore be reconsidered.