Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Scientists finally settle the debate

In short, in answer to the question that has puzzled the world throughout history: Which came first the chicken or the egg?  scientists say that the egg evolved more than half a billion years before the chicken  but the first domesticated chicken must have hatched before the first chicken egg was laid. On this World Egg Day Mail Online asked evolution experts for their views on this classic conundrum. They claim that although the egg evolved millions of years before the chicken  this does not necessarily mean that the chicken egg  came first. What is an egg? Eggs have been around for almost as long as all life on Earth has existed  with the exception of mammals  almost every animal species lays eggs. Jules Howard  zoology correspondent and author of a book on the evolution of eggs, The Endless Life  told Mail Online:  Eggs are the preferred way for evolution to pass genes on to subsequent generations at the right time

The egg before the chicken Given that this was hundreds of millions of years before life had even ventured onto land it’s safe to say that the egg came before the chicken. For most of us who think of eggs as hard-shelled things that can be cracked open, that may not be a very satisfactory answer. Unfortunately for anyone still betting on the chicken  the first hard-shelled egg appeared much earlier than the chicken. If you include them referring to eggs as a whole  the answer is definitely eggs, Dr Elaine Mather a palaeontologist at Flinders University who specialises in ancient birds  told MailOnline. What is a chicken? The first domestic chicken descended from a species of red jungle fowl called Gallus gallus, which evolved around 50 million years ago. Researchers believe that when humans began clearing areas of forest to grow rice and millet, birds from the forest began to congregate on the edges of the new fields. Over time, as the birds adapted to their new neighbors  they became more accustomed to humans and less territorial  and began raising larger groups of chicks.