Feathered Serpents

Exploring The Bird/Dinosaur connection - local menu


The idea that birds have descended from dinosaurs has been called into question. It does appear that eggs and feathers came down from the Age of Reptiles one way or another however.

On the annecdotal level, sometimes my chicken house sounds like a lizard colony, and their legs and feet are as reptilian as you can get. The idea the you have a herd of backyard velocitoraptors in your chicken house takes a little adjusting to, but the more you watch, the more sense it makes. At any rate, I'm glad chickens aren't any bigger.

Here are some links below that explore Feathered Serpents:


First Feathers
Older Reptile may take honors

Dino theory Questioned
The Chinese Fossils

Calling T-Rex "Daddy!"
"That's my dad!"

The Big Chicken


Dino/Bird Books
An interesting list

Dinosaur from Chicken Bones

Feathered Serpent, Mesoamerican-style
Quetzacoatl


 

     The Metaphysical Chicken

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
This is a familiar puzzle. It is also a sophisticated ontological question and a sly inquiry into the nature of recursion. (blah, blah, blah!)

Egg-laying is a reptilian characteristic. Chickens are birds with a noticeably reptilian ancestry. Their eggs are a direct link back to these ancient ancestors.

In answer to the question (or one interpretation of it) the egg pre-dates the chicken by millions of years.

(Notice too, how this answer actually sidesteps addressing the meat of question which, to re-phrase is:

...if every chicken comes from an egg and every egg comes from a chicken, which indeed came first?

Where does a circle start or end?

Who knows how primary the egg may be?. In some cosmologies the world or the universe is hatched from an egg.

Closer to home, we human beings are born live, but only after growing from a shell-less egg for nine months first.

(for the answer to the OTHER well-known philosophical conundrum that concerns chickens...)

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