SCIENTISTS believe they have finally cracked the age-old question of which came first — the chicken or the egg?
They say the tools to create eggs appeared long before chickens evolved.
How the first life forms — single-cell organisms around 3.7billion years ago — evolved into far more complex forms is still being researched.
Now experts at Geneva University have turned to a single-celled species discovered in 2017 in Hawaiian marine sediments.
Chromosphaera perkinsii separated from the animal evolutionary line a billion years ago.
The team found that once its cells reach their maximum size, they divide into multicellular colonies with a 3D structure, looking very similar to the early stages of animal embryonic development.
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They say this indicates such development existed before the first animals appeared around 800million years ago.
Previous research suggests even hard-shelled eggs, like those of chickens, did not likely evolve until 300million years ago.
Therefore, say the team, nature could “create eggs” way before modern-day chickens arrived on the scene around 10,000 years ago.
Marine Olivetta, of the Swiss university’s biochemistry department, told journal Nature: “It’s fascinating, a species discovered so recently allows us to go back in time a billion years.”
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