The genus Cymbiodyta Bedel, 1881 (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae: Enochrinae) comprises 31 species distributed in both the Old and New World portions of the Holarctic realm. Although the species and taxonomy are relatively well known, the phylogenetic relationships among Cymbiodyta and the evolutionary history of the genus remain unexplored.To understand the systematics and evolution of this lineage, we sequenced five gene fragments for about half of the species in the genus, including most major morphological groups. We also estimated divergence times to test the hypothesis that Cymbiodyta beetles took advantage of the different land bridges connecting the Palearctic and Nearctic regions, that became subaerial in the Cretaceous and Paleocene. Our results recover the eastern Nearctic genus Helocombus Horn, 1890 nesting within Cymbiodyta.Therefore, we synonymize Helocombus syn. n. with Cymbiodyta, resulting in one new combination, Cymbiodyta bifidus (LeConte 1855) comb. n. Our dating analyses and ancestral range estimation support a Nearctic origin of Cymbiodyta in the late Cretaceous about 100 million year ago.The placement of the unique Palearctic species on a long branch as sister to the rest of the clade and the dating results cannot reject a role of the De Geer and/ orThulean routes in the colonization of the Palearctic region from the Nearctic; however, they do not support a role for Beringia in the more recent colonization of the Oriental region.