This question appears regularly in the question file, so
let's take a shot at it.
In nature, living things evolve through changes in
their DNA. In an animal like a chicken, DNA from a male
sperm cell and a female ovum meet and combine to form a zygote
the first cell of a new baby chicken. This first cell
divides innumerable times to form all of the cells of the
complete animal. In any animal, every cell contains exactly
the same DNA, and that DNA comes from the zygote.
Chickens evolved from non-chickens through small changes
caused by the mixing of male and female DNA or by mutations
to the DNA that produced the zygote. These changes and
mutations only have an effect at the point where a new
zygote is created. That is, two non-chickens mated and the
DNA in their new zygote contained the mutation(s) that
produced the first true chicken. That one zygote cell
divided to produce the first true chicken.
Prior to that first true chicken zygote, there were only
non-chickens. The zygote cell is the only place where DNA
mutations could produce a new animal, and the zygote cell is
housed in the chicken's egg. So, the egg must have come
first.
|