Even if we talk specifically about the chicken egg. The chicken egg still came first before the chicken. At whatever arbitrary point along the evolutionary tree of the chicken we want to call them "chickens" instead of proto-chickens. The organism that is to be known as a chicken had to be an egg before it grew. The proto-chickens that were it's parents produced the mutant dna that would become a chicken in sperm/egg form before the first chicken grew.
. Absolutely. Mummy proto-chicken lays an egg, expecting more of the same, but when it hatches she says "**** me, I've laid a chicken".
If you read the article they are referring to the egg shell. The journalist is wrong (being sensational for clicks). The scientists are talking about the formation of eggshells and the journalist made a lazy sensationalist conclusion.
They would still have had shells before being a chicken. Even reptile eggs have shells. The composition for the shell varies by species but eggs had shells long before chickens.
Yeah, but the age-old question isn't "What came first, the reptile or the egg?" The classic quote is "Don't count your chickens before they hatch" You posted "we shouldn't count our eggs". Which is incorrect