The Egg vs Chicken story... Which came first?

It is a pet theory of mine. I worked it out way back in pre-university days.

Using the theory of evolution and natural selection which CBSE was teaching us – I tried to figure out which came first the Chicken or the Egg. Since none of us were alive to watch the first egg being hatched or the first chicken laying an egg – we go out on a limb with a few assumptions. Man came from Apes, Tigers from Saber-tooths, elephants from the wholly mammoth etc. Lets say the chicken came from hot-lips chicks (yes, disturbing imagery). These were very similar to modern day chickens but these chickens did not have beaks. As a result we cannot call them chickens.

Now it was difficult for these beakless animals to look for food in the tiny holes on the ground. As a result, their numbers were low. Generation after generation, some of these beakless animals’ mouths got calloused. This is a result of aberration in its genes which is still a recessive trait. An individual gets one gene from each of the parents to form a pair. Off the pair usually one is dominant over the other to various degrees. For the color of our skin – 3 pairs of genes decide our skin tone. However, all the skin tone genes carry same weight. Coming back to our calloused friends. They fair better than rest of their lot. As their number increase, the gene pool for this calloused trait increases leading to this recessive trait forming both genes in the pair. This leads to the growth of the early beak in the new hatchling.

The Chicken and the Egg Story – seen above, the arrival of the modern chicken by whatever timeline and sequence begins at the conception. The bringing together of requisite genetic material. The chicken as we know it followed.

Thus, the Egg came first.

Footnote : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/nottinghamshire/5019682.stm
I tried to contact these guys in Nottigham University after reading the article in 2006 but never got a reply.