We don't need to find Mesonychian DNA if the molecular data strongly
support the nesting of Whales WITHIN the clade bracketed by modern
artiodactyls. Of course the molecular data are useless for
distinguishing between the "whales as basal artiodactyls" and "whales as
advanced mesonychians"
Yes the tooth data support whales as mesonychians but nothing else does.
Not several independant molecular data sources (different genes, SINES
etc.) nor postcranial anatomy. There was a good paper about this a few
months ago in Systematic Biology. I believe this is the way forward in
systematics. Don't just throw everything together and see which signal
wins out in raw total evidence approach. Examine as many independent, or
nearly independant sources of data as possible and see which ones are
agreement and which ones are not. In this case we find everything,
except teeth, supports the Whales as artiodactyls hypothesis. I am
therefore inclined to accept that the tooth data is being misleading
through the action of extreme convergence. Another problem with the
tooth data is that it may be inflated through non-independance of the
characters, ie. a bump in the upper molar and a corresponding hollow in
the lower molar should be one character, not two.
cheers
adam Yates