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
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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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