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Old 03-15-2010, 04:17 AM   #19 (permalink)
Hektore
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Martian View Post
First of all, let's clarify the question. It's not 'the chicken or the egg,' but rather 'the chicken or the chicken egg.' Perhaps a semantic distinction, but given that pretty much all reptiles, arthropods and a even a couple of mammals are oviparous, it's important.
Thank you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Martian View Post
That said, it's fairly simple to determine that the egg must've come first. If we had a perfect fossil record and were able to trace the genetic ancestry of the modern chicken back through time, we would eventually hit a point where we'd find what's called speciation. Things do get a bit hazy here, because evolution is a continual and gradual process; however, at some point along the ancestral chicken line we would be obliged to draw a line where we can say that everything after it is a chicken, and everything prior to it is not. Where this line falls is immaterial, because we're only really concerned with the mechanism. Once we've isolated that population that can be considered chickens from that other population that comprises the pre-chickens, we can then identify the group of individuals that we would consider the first chickens.

Once we've done that, it's very easy to answer your question. An entity is genetically distinct from it's parents from the moment of conception. Once that sperms meets that ovum and the DNA synthesis occurs, we have a zygote that carries DNA which shares common traits with both parents, but is distinct from either. And there's our egg. Now, the chicken has to have hatched from an egg much like this one, and the organisms on the other side of our line are by the definition we've established not chickens, since they're pre-chickens. Therefore, the egg that will hatch into a chicken necessarily predates the chicken itself (they're the same entity in two forms) and the organisms that made the egg are not chickens. The egg came first.
The only thing that makes it possible to draw lines between species are the gaps in the record. If we had a complete record speciation lines would be impossible to draw. Well, not impossible or hazy but completely arbitrary and meaningless. There won't be any speciation 'event' to draw a line at. Every individual progeny that has surviving descendants will have been sufficiently like it's parents to interbreed with the same population (and therefore be considered the same species). If it wasn't, then whom did it breed with? The point at which we have a complete record (or nearly complete) is the point at which we're obliged to stop drawing lines, not draw them arbitrarily.

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Quote:
“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”
This quote makes me chuckle - "Well, they put a bunch of bullshit in there that isn't quite true, so we have to as well. "You know, to make it more conservative." Like either property is something we should find in our educational system.

This is what happens when you put politicians, instead of historians, in charge of history.
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