All of the postings before this are quite right. Unfortunately, there is no real basis as to the beginning of this molecular clock. The only thing it is based on is the rate of mutation, which is still highly up in the air. Some things can easily be traced/tracked, but we still have no idea or even suspicion of when other traits occurred. There are huge gaps in these molecular clocks that cannot be explained as of yet, and it is more of a divergence tool, which I think is what the original posting was concerned about. As to the various speciation events that occurred, we can only make an extremely rough geusstimate as to when they diverged. Hopefully, some day we will be able to create a rate of mutation molecular clock and be able to get some handle on it all.

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