This question is one of the oldest questions of humanity, a kind of philosophical and scientific enigma that has intrigued generations. Although it seems like a simple play on words, the question about what came first, the egg wave henin fact, has puzzled scientists, philosophers and curious people for centuries, since, deep down, it raises a reflection on the origins of life and evolution. However, a new study suggests that the answer to this puzzle may have finally been found.
Researchers from the University of Geneva have provided an unexpected answer to this question, one that leads us to go back more than a billion years in the history of the Earth. These scientists have concluded that essential components for the formation of an egg already existed long before the appearance of the first chickens. And to do this, their research focused on a single-celled organism called ‘Chromosphaera perkinsii’.
This microscopic species, found in Hawaiian marine sediments in 2017, dates back more than a billion yearslong before the appearance of the first animals. According to Omaya Dudin, one of the researchers of the study, the new species shows behaviors that indicate that it already had “multicellular coordination and differentiation processes”, something typical of the multicellular organismsdespite being a unicellular species. This means that the basic mechanisms for embryonic developmentthe process by which a fertilized egg becomes an embryo, either were present in this species so primitive
The results of the study
For the study’s researchers, this finding suggests that nature had the necessary genetic tools to “create eggs” long before animals, like chickens, evolved. In the words of Marine Olivetta, the lead author of the study, “it is fascinating” to think that an organism discovered so recently allows us to “go back in time more than a billion years” to understand the embryonic development.
The study also emphasizes that the hard shell eggslike those of chickens, probably arose much later, about 300 million years. The presence of these eggs in the fossil record confirms that, although eggs existed in primitive organisms long before birds arose, the egg in its current form evolved gradually in the history of life on Earth.
This discovery redefines the context in which biologists had asked the question for centuries. Instead of debating whether it was the chicken or the chicken egg, science suggests that The true origin of the egg as a concept is related to the development process of organisms in the early history of life. In fact, The basic mechanisms that allowed the development of embryos were already present long before the appearance of any bird..
With this new perspective, it seems that the enigma finally finds an answer: the egg, in a primitive form, was first. This discovery, which takes us on a journey to the origins of life on the planet, reveals how nature designed the first processes that later allowed the diversity and evolution of species, including chickens.
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