Replying to: J. H. Geisler & J. M. Theodor 458, 10.1038/nature07776 (2009)The analysis of Geisler and Theodor confirms our main phylogenetic result, that raoellids are, or include, the sister group to cetaceans. Their study expands on our findings by inferring that hippopotamids are the sister group to the combined raoellid–cetacean clade, whereas our paper had explicitly stated that our data could not address the position of the extant artiodactyl families.