The typical philosophical dilemma that humanity has been asked for centuries was finally resolved: Was the egg or the chicken first? Well, to this doubt, scientists from National Geographic and of the magazine Nature They responded to this questioning based on science, thanks to a study in which they analyze a mysterious unicellular species found in Hawaii.
As explained, From ancient Greece thinkers like Aristotle They used to reflect on the cycle of life; However, this doubt has also been identified by biology, philosophy and logic. Now, at present the dilemma seems to find a response based on evolution.
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Biology raises the following: the eggs, in their primitive form, existed long before modern birds arose. In fact, it was evolution that allowed different species to reproduce, such as amphibians, reptiles and birds. The process goes further, from the unicellular organisms that populated the oceans more than one billion years ago.
Was the egg or the chicken first?
The research team led by Professor Omaya Dudin focused his study on a unicellular species called Chromosphaera Perkinskii. This microorganism, discovered in 2017 in seabed near Hawaii, has turned out to be a key piece to understand the evolution of reproduction. It is estimated that C. Perkinskii existed more than one billion years ago, that is, long before the appearance of the first animals on Earth.
Nature/ National Geographic
What makes this organism important is its ability to form multicellular structures that remind the embryos of modern animals. During the observations, the scientists noticed that their cells were organized in a similar way to how they do in the early stages of the embryonic development of more complex organisms. Even its genetic activity seems to be synchronized with that of animal embryos.
This seems to indicate that finding chromosphara perkinskii, means that embryos could have existed long before the appearance of the first animals. According to researchers, this suggests two possibilities:
- The embryonic processes that allow the formation of an egg were already present in the unicellular organisms long before the evolution of the animals.
- These processes evolved independently in different branches of the tree of life, including that of C. Perkinskii.
In any of these scientific options they find that the egg has much older origins than it was believed.
It was first the egg that the chicken
From an evolutionary point of view, the evidence suggests that The eggs existed before the appearance of birds. It is known that the eggs with a hard peel, like those of the chickens, emerged approximately 300 million years ago. However, more primitive forms of eggs, such as reptiles and amphibians, existed much earlier.
Getty images
And now, with the discovery of C. Perkinskii, scientists suggest that embryonic development has even deeper roots in the history of life on earth. This means that, in evolutionary terms, the egg is a mechanism that was perfected over time, until we reach the forms we know today. In other words, The egg came first, as explained by National Geographic together with researchers at the University of Geneva and Nature magazine.
