For those who know their science history, this was referred to as “whippo” hypothesis. It was embraced originally by molecular biologists, who based on their studies, decided that the closest living relatives of whales are hippos. Now many paleontologists frowned upon this, because on morphological grounds hippos seemed more closely related to other even-toed hoofed mammals, such as pigs and camels. But the whippo hypothesis claimed, on molecular grounds, that hippos are more closely related to whales than other land mammals.(Dennis Normile, “New Views of the origins of Mammals,” Science 281, 1998. 774-775) also Richard Monastersky, “The Whales Tale, Research on Whale Evolution,” Science News, November 6, 1999. So we had evolutionist looking at fossil evidence concluding that hippos were more closely related to land mammals such as pigs and camels and molecular biologists looking at molecular evidence and concluding that hippos were more closely related to whales.