Chicken or the egg?

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egg. it makes sense if you believe in darwinism. i think.

Eggsactly!

BUT, the protochicken laid an egg that hatched into the first chicken. So that protochicken's egg was the first chicken egg.

As for empirical proof of evolution, there are "fossils" in the genetic code as well as in the rocks. Look up pseudogenes, endogenous retroviruses, and human chromosome 2 to see what I'm talking about. Chicken DNA still carries some genes no longer expressed from the time of the dinosaurs, and some scientists are working on "turning on" those genes so they are expressed again to give a chicken a tail, teeth, and claws like the dinosaurs it evolved from or shared a common ancestor with.

Individual organisms don't evolve though. Populations do. The frequency of some traits changed within a breeding population where eventually they would no longer be considered protochickens but would be what we consider chickens. Where to draw the line is arbitrary.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 18 Oct 2011, 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Prokaryotes

I think maybe the theory of the turkey and the dog might actually be just as valid!

This might not work well in print, but nevertheless ...

Ask-A-Nurse: What is an EKG?

Nurse will answer: Electrocardiogram.

Ask-A-Nurse: What is an EEG?

Nurse will answer: Electroencephalogram.

Ask-A-Nurse: What is an EGG?

Nurse will answer: Never heard of one.

Response: It is an egg, and we eat them for breakfast.

Turkeys and dogs do have a common ancestor, but you have to go way back before the time of the dinosaurs to find it. It would be something that was around after some fish became tetrapods and came onto the land. Some tetrapods became amphibians and some became amniotes. Some of the amniotes became synapsids and some became sauropsids (leading to reptiles and birds). Some of the synapsids evolved to become mammals. So the common ancestor of turkeys and dogs was an amniote. I hope this helps!