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Asked by faythe123 to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 19 Nov 2013.
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Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan answered on 19 Nov 2013:
A friend told me recently that this had been solved and that the egg came first! I can’t however remember if he told me what the evidence was for this!? : )
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David Christensen answered on 19 Nov 2013:
It must be the egg (if you include all eggs). Reptiles lay eggs and reptiles have been around longer than birds, I think, so there must have been eggs before chickens. Even if there were other birds around before reptiles, I doubt there would have been a bird that we would recognise as a chicken, so there would have been birds eggs before there were chickens.
If you’re not going to let me include all other eggs, then chickens and chicken eggs must have come at the same time. Although it’s still a difficult thing to define when there was the first bird that we would call a chicken. The chicken would have gradually evolved from other birds before it, but when did it become a chicken? If you can find the first chicken, did that chicken hatch from a chicken egg or is the first chicken egg the first egg that is laid by the first chicken?
I realise that I’ve just asked your question back at you which isn’t a very good answer. Sorry. I did at least try to think about it as though I’m an evolutionary biologist though.
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Matthew Tomlinson answered on 19 Nov 2013:
I’m with Aoife and Dave, the egg was first. As Dave said reptiles lay eggs and were around before birds like the chicken, so it must be the egg first, how the egg evolved however is a much harder question. What is pretty cool is that we’re starting to realise that birds are probably the descendents of theropod dinosaurs like T rex, and that these dinosaurs had feathers. Although that does mean that T rex was essentially a giant chicken with teeth!
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