egg came before the chicken

I decided to research this last second and came up with this. According to fossil records, the present-day chicken is believed to be a descendent of Archaeopteryx, a creature with sharp teeth and winged claws, found in the Jurassic period and thought to be more than 150 million years old. According to Augusta (1961), Archaeopteryx is "a true bird, occupying the phylogenetically lowest place in the class of birds (Aves) and is the only member of the ancient group of the Archaeornithes (or Saururae); all other birds, whether extinct or extant, belong to the higher group of Neornithes (or Ornithurae)" (p.56). These upper Jurassic birds were not much larger than a pigeon and, like chickens of today, were not good flyers. More recent evidence (Chatterjee, 1997) suggests that the Protoavis Texenis from the late Triassic period may actually predate Archaeopteryx by some 75 million years. The evidence, however, requires a much more complex understanding of comparative anatomy, as this discovery did not reveal a feather structure found with later fossils of the Archaeopteryx. Fossil records also demonstrate another bird identified as Confuciusornis (so named as a result of its discovery in Northern China) is similar to Archaeopteryx but lacks teeth. Experts believe that Confuciusornis may have occupied this same historic period. According to Paul (2002) the evidence that birds evolved from small predatory dinosaurs in Mesozoic times is overwhelming. Paleontologists now agree that birds are the direct descendents of dinosaurs. The many inhabitants of the Jurassic era, including the most commonly identified dinosaurs, were egg layers. Even during the Jurassic period there were chicken-sized, egg-laying predators identified as Compsognathus. The similarities in modes of reproduction between avepod dinosaurs and birds extend to the sharing of a distinctive eggshell microstructure not observed in other amniotes (Paul, 2002). Reproduction by means of external egg laying allows the evolving dinosaurs to produce large numbers of offspring without the additional weight (and associated diminishment of mobility) of an internal gestation process. According to archeological theory, birds evolved from dinosaurs, which, in turn, evolved over millions of years from the primordial goo that produced single-cell organisms. Many forms of birds, including the precursor to the modern chicken, continued to develop through the Cenozoic era and by the Oligocene period, over 35 million years ago, most of the relatives of the birds we know today had appeared. In fact, the dinosaur-to-bird lineage can better be divided according to non-avian dinosaurs and avian dinosaurs. Consistent with evolutionary theory, Dingus and Rowe (1998) have suggested all living birds belong to either the Neognath lineage, which includes the Gallus gallus (chicken) or the Palaeognath. Further, the Neognath lineage split into two distinct lines during the Cretaceous period. One such split includes the anseriforms plus the galliform birds, such as chickens and turkeys. Scientists have identified that domesticated chickens (Gallus domesticus) were descendants of the Red Jungle Fowl (Gallus gallus) and appeared as early as 4,000 BC in Southeast Asia. The domesticated chickens were initially used for entertainment in the form of cock fighting, rather than food. However, by 1400 BC the domestic chicken was popular throughout Asia and Europe and chicken eggs were hatched in mass incubators. In sum, birds of today are ancestors of amphibian life that evolved from an aquatic existence to survive on dry land during the warm period of Perm. These predatory creatures, or Reptilia, were generally diminutive and slim with elongated posterior limbs. Reproduction by means of eggs is found in all such reptiles and the trait continued during the evolutionary period in which reptilia variants became warm-blooded, developed feathers, and began to master flying. In short, they became birds; that is, including those that we later identified as chickens. http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org...