29 Apr '06 03:15>
The egg came before the chicken. The chicken's ancestors were laying eggs far before anything you'd recognize as a chicken or even a bird or reptile came to be. Fish lay eggs. In fact, eggs exist for any sexually reproducing organism; they just have variations between species.
Can the intermediate stages, even over millions of years, be postulated from a non-egg laying reproductive system to an egg-laying reproductive system?
Absolutely. There are organisms which do both. Sexual reproduction evolved as a supplement to asexual reproduction. When the conditions around the organism are changing rapidly, it uses sexual reproduction to combine all the most survival promoting genes into a really tough breed which can survive any dangers that may come. However, they switch to asexual reproduction at times which are more constant, as the organism that's around clearly lives well under those conditions. As sexual reproduction evolved, it eventually became more and more effective and the asexual reproduction genes eventually became a hinderance.
According to the principles of speciation, neither the chicken nor the egg came first
This is incorrect.
Can the intermediate stages, even over millions of years, be postulated from a non-egg laying reproductive system to an egg-laying reproductive system?
Absolutely. There are organisms which do both. Sexual reproduction evolved as a supplement to asexual reproduction. When the conditions around the organism are changing rapidly, it uses sexual reproduction to combine all the most survival promoting genes into a really tough breed which can survive any dangers that may come. However, they switch to asexual reproduction at times which are more constant, as the organism that's around clearly lives well under those conditions. As sexual reproduction evolved, it eventually became more and more effective and the asexual reproduction genes eventually became a hinderance.
According to the principles of speciation, neither the chicken nor the egg came first
This is incorrect.