The age-old question of whether the chicken or the egg came first has finally received a compelling answer from scientists: the egg came first. Here’s the reasoning:
Eggs predate chickens by millions of years. Early amniotic eggs, capable of being laid on land, appeared approximately 340 million years ago, while modern chickens only emerged about 58,000 years ago. These early eggs were laid by the ancestors of chickens, including dinosaurs and ancient reptiles.
A protein crucial to chicken eggshell formation, called ovocleidin-17 (OC-17), is found only in chickens. While this suggests chickens play a key role in producing eggs, scientists argue that the first true chicken likely hatched from an egg laid by a bird that was genetically similar to, but not exactly, a chicken.
Fossils show that eggs, in various forms, have existed across species for millions of years before chickens ever appeared.
In conclusion, while eggs in a broad evolutionary sense came first, the question of whether the “chicken egg” or “chicken” came first hinges on definitions. Current evidence, however, leans toward the egg being the precursor to the chicken.
