Scientists reckon they’ve finally solved the age-old conundrum of which came first — the chicken or the egg?
They suggest that the mechanisms to create eggs existed long before chickens evolved. The evolution from the first life forms — single-cell organisms around 3.7 billion years ago — into more complex forms is still under investigation.
Now, researchers at Geneva University have focused on a single-celled species found in 2017 in Hawaiian marine sediments. Chromosphaera perkinsii split from the animal evolutionary line a billion years ago.
The team discovered that once its cells reach their maximum size, they divide into multicellular colonies with a 3D structure, resembling the early stages of animal embryonic development.
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
This suggests such development existed before the first animals appeared around 800 million years ago, The Sun reports.
Earlier research indicates even hard-shelled eggs, like those of chickens, likely didn’t evolve until 300 million years ago. Thus, the team believes nature could “create eggs” long before modern-day chickens emerged around 10,000 years ago.
(Image: Getty Images)
Marine Olivetta, from the Swiss university’s biochemistry department, told Nature journal: “It’s fascinating, a species discovered so recently allows us to go back in time a billion years.”
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