That is questionable. In post 146 VadeRetro gives a SA link that again points out the new evidence that belies the old thinking. The long and the short of it is that nearly all of the new evidence shows a close relationship to herbivores not carnivores. Thar she blows!
The teeth of a 50-million-year-old whale called Pakicetidae, said Thewissen, are not as highly evolved as those of the mesonychians, making it unlikely that whales are the descendants of that group.
The fossil whales give mixed evidence about whether the cetaceans belong among the ungulates. Thewissen says that five traits of the early whales, including features of the skull, upper teeth, and feet, are "not inconsistent" with the hippo hypothesis. But the last molar on the lower jaw, which has three sections in artiodactyls, has just two in whales. And Thewissen recently discovered an anklebone from an early whale ancestor that still had legs. It lacks the rounded head characteristic of an ungulate anklebone, although it is similar in other respects.
Thewissen thinks his findings open the door to a tentative link between whales and ungulates. Several paleontologists at the meeting agreed that the whale-hippo link is looking more plausible, and Norihiro Okada, a molecular biologist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, thinks the case will soon get stronger: "I think paleontologists may discover more [features common to early cetaceans and early hippos] in the near future."
Vade's SA link
Although all the new fossils point to artiodactyls as the ancestors of whales, where on the family tree cetaceans belong in relation to hippos remains controversial. Whereas Gingerich's team considers the whale-hippo link a possibility, the analysis conducted by Thewissen and his colleagues indicates that cetaceans are not more closely related to one artiodactyl group—such as hippos—than another.
Resolving that matter will require further work. "Two other evolutionary transitions vital to our understanding of the relationship between whales and artiodactyls beg for elucidation: the precise ancestry of hippopotami and the origin of artiodactyls themselves," Kenneth D. Rose of Johns Hopkins University comments in a perspective article accompanying the Science report. "The answers seem likely to come only from an improved fossil record—perhaps from the same region that has yielded fossils showing that whales evolved from artiodactyls."
Plus, of course, all of the genetic data(save one) that put whales closer to hippos.
Also from Vade's link---"Now I admit the possibility that hippos are a sideline of artiodactyls that might be closer to whales than any other living animals," he remarks.
What intriques me, is the reluctance of the cognoscenti to abandon their positions facing such a preponderance of contrary evidence, yet their celerity to accept tenuous data when it supports.
Thanks, for the SA link Vade.
"He" being a former proponent of the mesonychid ancestry of whales.
AndrewC: What intriques me, is the reluctance of the cognoscenti to abandon their positions facing such a preponderance of contrary evidence, yet their celerity to accept tenuous data when it supports.
No question that scientists have pet theories. Notice however that it's considered bad form to keep going when the evidence is blowing you out of the water.
If, as often claimed by the C-siders, everyone was simply spinning the data for his own version of The Infallible Truth, such admissions as the one you quote would never happen.