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The linked website shows the progression of a four legged land animal to an ocean-dwelling whale. It looks pretty reasonable except for one thing -- the blow hole. How in the world would the blow hole have come about? I can imagine the pelvis shrinking away and the legs and feet turning to fins over time -- that seems like a do-able progression -- but what pathway could the development of a blowhole possibly have taken? Have they found an intermediate form for that?

The final form has a special air passage leading out the back of the neck with a muscular opening for sealing it off. Having both structures in place seems like a real feat of coordination to me. It would require the opening to show up just as the airway was finding its way out the back of the neck. In the meantime, the airway would've been useless without the opening and the opening would've been useless without the airway. They would've had no reason to exist on their own, so it's like they would have had to anticipate one another. I find it very hard to imagine this occuring through a process that didn't have some capacity to plan and coordinate. I don't see a random selection process, even if it were driven by a prime directive of some sort -- like to maximize reproductive potential -- as being able to accomplish this.

I know this is a fairly standard type of objection. What is the counterargument? How is it that time and time again, evolution has apparently managed to solve problems that, if they were being handled by a person, would require foresight, planning, and coordination? And in the particular case of the blowhole, do they have a theory for how it came about?