Cracking an old riddle, which came first, the chicken or the egg?
A. Here you must be precise with your terms, says Amherst College biologist Paul W. Ewald. If the question is, “Which came first, the chicken or the generic egg?,” then it’s the egg. The ancestors of chickens were laying eggs long before there were chickens. If you’re asking, “Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?,” then the answer depends on exactly when the genetic mix that you call a “chicken” first arose: If the last necessary mutation occurred just after egg formation (say during early embryo development), then the chicken came first. But if the mutation occurred in the process of egg formation, then the chicken egg preceded the chicken. However, any dividing line here between chicken and pre-chicken ancestors would have to be arbitrary. “Most evolutionary biologists prefer to say that both the chicken and the chicken egg evolved gradually together over many generations, in concert from the ancestral chicken and the ancestral chicken egg.” Q. Heard the latest on vampir
