Egg came before the chicken

Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg. Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life. Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg. Professor John Brookfield, a specialist in evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham, told the UK Press Association the pecking order was clear. The living organism inside the eggshell would have had the same DNA as the chicken it would develop into, he said. "Therefore, the first living thing which we could say unequivocally was a member of the species would be this first egg," he added. "So, I would conclude that the egg came first." The same conclusion was reached by his fellow "eggsperts" Professor David Papineau, of King's College London, and poultry farmer Charles Bourns. Mr Papineau, an expert in the philosophy of science, agreed that the first chicken came from an egg and that proves there were chicken eggs before chickens. He told PA people were mistaken if they argued that the mutant egg belonged to the "non-chicken" bird parents. "I would argue it is a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it," he said. "If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg." Bourns, chairman of trade body Great British Chicken, said he was also firmly in the pro-egg camp. He said: "Eggs were around long before the first chicken arrived. Of course, they may not have been chicken eggs as we see them today, but they were eggs." -cnn.com Darwinian Chicken A further analysis of Darwinian theory finds that all animals were preceded by, and evolved from, ancestors that were not exactly like them. Changes in DNA as a result of the combinations of mutation, mistakes in DNA repair, ecological affects, and other influences allowed for the development of creatures that more harmoniously coexisted with the changing environment. As a result, with each successive evolutionary change, there is necessarily a creature that lacked the characteristics of that which later evolved. In the case of birds, including chickens, the eggs of the pre-evolved creature contained the newly evolved living animal. Specifically, a pre-chicken laid an egg that contained the newly evolved chicken. Thus, from the Darwinian perspective, we clearly find that the egg preceded the newly evolved chicken. In simplest terms, we may make several assumptions: a) millions of years ago, ancestors of the present day chicken did not contain the exact DNA or other characteristics of today's chicken—thus, this was not a chicken; b) this pre-chicken was probably the ancestor of several egg-laying avian dinosaurs; c) each successive generation of these ancestral birds resulted in creatures that more closely approximate what we now know as a chicken. In an evolutionary timeline, we can see the result of our assumptions, and the answer to this alleged dilemma becomes clear: Jurassic Non-Chicken ï¿½ Egg ï¿½ Triassic Non-Chicken ï¿½ Egg ï¿½ || History Continues || ï¿½ Great Grandmother of Chicken ï¿½ Egg ï¿½ Grandmother of Chicken ï¿½ Egg ï¿½ Mother of Chicken ï¿½ Egg ï¿½ FIRST CHICKEN ï¿½ Egg ï¿½ Another Chicken ï¿½ Egg-cetera. With each successive generation, a nonchicken evolved closer to what became the first chicken. That first chicken arrived into this world from the confines of an egg. So, what came first? Clearly the egg preceded the chicken. Further, it does not matter where you draw the line between what you may call a chicken and a nonchicken. If for example, in the above diagram, you decide that the nonchicken identified as "Mother of Chicken" contained enough "essence of chickenness" to be identified as the chicken, then this creature was still preceded by, and came forth from an egg. Those who are more philosophically minded may wish to further examine the true meaning of the essence of chickenness. Existentialists might scrutinize the circumstances of the pre-chicken, prior to it becoming fully actualized as a chicken. How did the pre-chickens exist without enough "chicken essence" to be identified as chicken, and what does this mean? Whatever it may mean, the egg contained the essence that eventually became the chicken. The egg was first. Others have argued that chickens obviously came first, as eggs are laid by chickens. They further assert that even if chickens evolved from some non-chicken creature, the first chicken did not come from the egg of a chicken—it had to come from a non-chicken egg. Therefore, the first egg came after the first chicken. This argument fails to attend to the originally posed statement. As presented, the question is "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" It does not say, "Which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?" Rather than engage in a discussion revolving around the evident conclusion that the chicken, once hatched and so designated, came from its formative home—a chicken egg, we will merely dismiss this inaccurate rendering of the original question. - http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org... So in theory when asked what came first the chicken or the egg is could have been any kind of egg like turtle egg or other. If meaning all winged fowls that would mean we have more animals to find