Now remember, my whole intent of the evidence I was showing was merely to highlight disagreements that scientists can have with each other, a development I heartily approve of. I think it makes for good science. Christine, in responding, ignored most of the evidence (there was more), eventually accused me of labeling artiodactyls as “imaginary fossils”, which is totally incorrect. I labeled them as imaginary “missing links”, which of course acknowledges their existence. She then labeled as “absurd” the possibility that any scientist has “ever” considered whales and hippos as ancestors or descendants of each other. This is irrefutably untrue. Remember, I did not say that I believed it, or any scientist should believe it. I myself, being a creationist, also find it “absurd”. That is not the same thing as saying that someone else may have believed or endorsed it. They obviously did. Was there disagreement? Certainly, and for good reason, Nonetheless, there were those who were amiable to this hypothesis ( I have not mentioned the research by Gingerich and Thewissen et. al. which concluded that it was “plausible” that hippos “may be the closest living relatives of whales” with accompanying commentary by French biologist Christian de Muizon stating that the new results “contradict the previous hypothesis of both paleontologists and molecular biologists”, He is referring to the previous belief that whales were more closely related to pigs and camels. Not everyone was as enthusiastic. This was in 2001. The Whippo hypothesis took off in the later years of the twentieth century).