Which Protocols are used for PING?

Question

Okay, I know that the answer to this question is ICMP - all my textbooks are saying so, the Internet is saying so, everyone is saying so... except for my TA. According to this T

Answer 1

Ping can be used with a variety of protocols. The protocol value can be appletalk, clns, ip (the default), novell, apollo, vines, decnet, or xns. Some protocols require another Cisco router at the remote end to answer ping packets. ... (Cisco field manual: router configuration, By Dave Hucaby, Steve McQuerry. Page 64)

... For IP. ping uses ICMP type 8 requests and ICMP type 0 replies. The traceroute (by using UDP) command can be used to discover the routers along the path that packets are taking to a destination. ... (Page 63)