What Came First - The Chicken Or The Egg?

CNN claims that Chicken and egg debate unscrambled:

Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.

Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life.

Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg.

This is a very compelling argument. However, I'm not sure that I can agree with it.

The Natural History Museum in London has a marvelous exhibit on Darwin and Natural Selection. (There is an online section about Evolution, but it is much briefer than the actual exhibit). In particular, it has a discussion about how new species are created. In species X, individuals will differ genetically due to the various possible combinations in genes that are possible, and these variences and combinations will expand over time due to mutations in the genes (whose utility and survivability are determined by environmental factors). Eventually, a subset Y of individuals of X, will only mate (reproduce) with other members of Y, and not the rest X, possibly due to factors such as geographic isolation. Consequently, this subset Y will (can) diverge more and more (genetically) with the rest of X as time goes by and more mutations occur. Eventually, individuals from Y will no longer mate with members from X (even if the other factors, such as the geographic isolation are removed). i.e. The members of Y now see themselves as different from the rest of X (due to their genetic differences with X that have grown over time). Hence, Y is now a distinct species from X. So for chickens to be different from the pre-chicken birds (PCB) from pre-history you need a bird to decide that it is not a PCB, but is instead a chicken. Thus, the chicken came before the egg.

If that was too confusing, try this argument: Suppose the egg came first and begot the first chicken (as suggested by the CNN article). This chicken is the first chicken. So how is she going to reproduce and make more chickens? The Mrs. Chicken needs a Mr. Chicken to make some baby chickens. But how is Mrs. Chicken going to do this if she's the first (and, likely, only) chicken? (She was created by random genetic mutations. So in all likelihood she is the only chicken). The answer is that she won't be able to reproduce! So there will be no baby chickens and, consequently, no chicken species. Hence, Mrs. Chicken will be the one and only chicken ever. She will have died off long ago in pre-history and no will have ever heard of chickens. Therefore, the egg cannot have come first. Per Sherlock Holmes, It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth., it now follows that the chicken preceeded the egg.