Science desk
< October 12	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	October 14 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 13

Chicken's ancestors vs. ours

I have heard it claimed that at some point in prehistory, the chicken's ancestors ate our ancestors. Is that actually true? Animal lover |666| 17:20, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My ancestors weren't eaten by prehistoric chickens 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️🐤 - well at least not until after they'd had eggs/babies :-) NadVolum (talk) 17:38, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's likely true. Chickens are Birds, which are surviving therepod dinosaurs, which originated around 230 million years ago and (it is thought) were originally mostly carnivorous or omnivorous. Avialae, the clade including bird ancestors, became distinct from other Theropods perhaps around 160 million years ago. We are primate mammals, whose ancestors the Mammaliformes evolved some time between 200 and 150 million years ago, were mostly small, and were undoubtably predated by many dinosaurs, including some Avialae. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 20:41, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Astonishingly, this question is an existing Google search term: "common ancestor of chickens and humans". The top result, from Nature, a reputable scientific journal, says:

The most recent common ancestor for humans and chickens is thought to have been some kind of primitive reptile that lived more than 310 million years ago. [1]

Alansplodge (talk) 11:49, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But unless it was cannibalistic, this common ancestor is not an example of an ancestor of the birds eating an ancestor of the primates. --Lambiam 17:22, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, misread the question (again). Alansplodge (talk) 08:54, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I misread ate as are, too. —Tamfang (talk) 21:05, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The split between the clades Sauropsida (which includes chickens) and Synapsida (which includes us) took place about 312 million years ago.^[2] There was ample opportunity for the carnivorous theropods in the ancestral line of today's chickens, which appeared 231 million years ago, to snack on contemporaneous siblings of some of our ancestors. --Lambiam 17:56, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's even conceivable that an actual ancestor of chickens (not just a random member of an ancestral population) ate an actual ancestor of humans. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:12, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]