• Question: what came first the chicken or the egg?id like to know your theory.

    Asked by kenzie01 to Beth on 19 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Beth Mortimer

      Beth Mortimer answered on 19 Jun 2012:

      Ha good question.

      Well I think the egg came first. This is because the first ‘chicken’ as we know it has only been around for a few tens of millions of years, and certainly after the large dinosaurs went extinct 60 million years ago. (Birds evolved from the dinosaurs that didn’t go extinct then.)

      The egg (with a hard shell, is known as an amniotic egg) is used by all reptiles, birds and even some mammals (the duck billed platypus), and the first egg was probably used 300 million years ago. (Humans and other mammals lost the ability to make eggs and grow their young inside them instead, but their ancestor millions of years ago used to make eggs.)

      Therefore the egg was in common use by many animals before the first chicken pecked through its egg shell.

Comments