Closer than chimps/people?
They now admit that the whale is an artiodactyl yet they refuse to place it close to the hippo.
Huh? Hippos are closest to whales in the diagram you posted. Earlier speculations have been shown to be wrong - that's the way science works.
As I said, If you could find the same retroposon in the same place in cows and whales, then it will also be found in hippos, or the ToE has taken a *major* hit.
ID/Creationism has no explanation for this fact, other than a completely ad-hoc
"Well, they were just designed that way; wouldn't you use spare cow parts if you were designing a whale or hippo?"
I knew it would be taken the wrong way. Let me rephrase. Among extant genera, DNA evidence places the hippo genera as the whale genera's closest relative. And no to the second part, since at the moment, paleontologists have no difficulty in placing the whale outside of both the cow and the hippo(and the pig and the camel).