Fig. 1

Molecular divergence times of PVs. A fixed mean substitution rate for HPVs was applied based on estimated evolutionary rates inferred from a study that investigated the times to the MRCA based of feline papillomaviruses (1.95 × 10^− 8 nucleotide substitutions per site per year) [12]. Classification was based on [1, 2]. Posterior support values and exact divergence estimates in million years (with 95% highest posterior density) for the nodes corresponding to the 10 HPV types are presented in Table 2, the novel types are indicated in red