what came 1st the xeno or the facehugger?

the way i think it could go is that the engineer creates the facehugger and eggs in some kind of bio-engineering and within that creature it contains the same principles as the stuff in the earns. The stuff in the earns seems to be life, within each urn is the chemical goop that can start life on any planet, they are like urn missiles that you fire into planets. But when man steals the process of how to achieb=ve this the engineers create a curse that brings destruction in the form of a creature that will infest and steal a persons dna and produce a deadly creature from deep within. Its like a clever way to punish those that steal bio-life technology with bio-death technology. At some point though it backfires on the engineers and and works against them. hence WE ARE THE GODS NOW

"so how can a being be so fossilised in such a short time frame?" Not sure, but it is not on earth. Maybe the extreme cold and atmosphere fossil things faster on lv-426.

Although I'm no specialist in palentology I'm under the impression that cold, lack of atmosphere, etc. tend to slow fossilization processes. Like I said, not shure though. Plus, we're not sure there was no atmosphere of some sort inside the ship, all we know is the nice people who got into the ship (to DIE!) chose not remove their helmets because the atmosphere was not good [u]for humans[/u]!! Also, although I'm starting to believe that the Alien is going to be pictured as some sort of bioweapon, I don't really think it makes much sense. A species with such advanced technology should be able to create a much more advanced bioweapon. A virus, for example, would be much faster then an xenomorph outbreak. Not to mention the fact that, ultimately, an Alien infestation relies a bit on luck. So to the case of what came first, I guess the answer is the same regardless of the xenomorph being a weapon or a "freak of nature": the Alien came first. Why? Here's why: [list] [*] [b]The xenomorph is a weapon[/b]: in that case, I'd say it's much agressive to lay a queen (or a few hundred of them...) in a planet and allow the infestation to take place - queens are quite deadly, so you not only protect the eggs, but may also kill some of the inhabitants in the process. win-win! :) [*] The xenomorph is a natural species: in that case, it evolved from some other species, in which case I'm led to believe that some species gave birth to the xenomorph which started its own crazy life cycle [/list] And that would be it, I guess! Curious about what you guys (and gals) think about it though ;)

In Alien Dallas comments on how the alien being "looks" fossilized. Looks being the operative word here its his opinion which as he is a spaceship captain and not a paleontologist is fairly uninformed. So i think my point is you cant take it as given that the Jockey is a fossil just, well, long dead. Actually i might be wrong here but a fossil is the 3d imprint of a creature buried for millions of years under thousands of tones of rock so a better word would be petrified like those trees.

Also this whole Queen idea is from Aliens and not exactly part of the original life cycle idea, in Alien special edition Ripley finds Dallas and Brett who after being snatched by the Xeno are being turned into new eggs by some nasty process. If that is the actual life cycle then one fully developed xeno can take genetic material and reform it into new eggs and then find hosts and on and on. For me that is much more scary than a big Queen as thats insectoid stuff so old news. Dont get me wrong i like Aliens but the Queen was a little bit of a let down really. Oh and if the Xenos are the result of design rather than evolution you dont have a chicken or egg problem as the first was made and then off it goes to self perpetuate its little biomechanical heart out just as was intended.....or not if its just one huge cock up. In a way the Xenos are kind of like a macrotic virus jusy copy after copy.

Right, the queen is from Aliens and RS is just disregarding everything after Alien... I forgot about that. Don't really care much for the queen, but it kind of makes sense. Turning hosts into eggs doesn't, at least not to me (I've said this before in another thread). Here's how it would go: [list] [*] facehugger infects a host [*] chest burster is born [*] chest burster grows into a full blown xeno and gets hosts [*] xeno turns hosts into eggs [*] xeno gets more hosts for the eggs (?!?!?!?!) [*] repeat "ad eternum" [/list] Now turning a host into an egg must be a somewhat complicated process, biologically speaking. If the xeno can perform such complex genetic tasks, why not just turn the host straight into another xeno? This would make sense specially if the xeno is a bioweapon, as it would speed up the process of infestation and elimination of the target species... After all, an egg kills one host, a xeno kills many :)

It is not unusual for a castle to have a moat as part of a defence perimeter. Instead of using water however, lets say we have this gloop that once it comes in contact with an intruder, the intruders DNA is altered to turn that being into an alien hybrid, but not a xenomorph. Now lets just suppose that the unsuspecting victim is female and in the early stages of pregnancy, maybe its at that point the embryo turns into a xenomorph. To add a little twist onto this, what if the victim, who has had their DNA altered does not physically look different on the outside. They then go back to their home world, where they have sex and end up with a xenomorph. That would make for one hell of a sexually transmitted disease, and a very covert bioweapon. So which comes first, The xeno or the facehugger. In this scenario it would be the xeno, but only as a by-product from a DNA altered victim.

I guess the point of the eggs is control on the part of the maker, like a safety catch on a gun. I wouldn't be much good to just have new grumpy Xenos all the time much better to have an egg you can sit somewhere and store till you need it. As for turning a person to an egg being hard we have to find a suitable mate then carry a child for 9 monthsand then care for it for like 18 yers, elephants gestate for 20 months and some creatures undergo sex changes when populations become one sex beforeany of that can even start so i would argue dissolving someone down into raw components might be less tricky more like digestion and reproduction mixed together. A hive without the need for a Queen at all !. One egg or fully mature Xeno and you will be overrun in no time at all and to stop it you would have to kill every last one no matter what. That seems very scarily logical and efficient to me.

Scott is clearly accepting Aliens as part of his Prometheus universe. Pictures of early pulse rifles and the power loader on the Weyland website confirms this. There is no reason to assume that both life cycles can't co exist. A single Alien creates eggs from prey until a queen is spawned.

And "there you are jonesy" ;) you have a point. It could well be a mix of digestion and reproduction. But knowing my way arround genetics relativelly well, I still find it hard to swallow. Note that I never state that the xeno being able to reproduce itself without the queen is a bad thing. It actually makes perfect sense! As for the gestational process, I'm sorry, IMHO the "host to egg" thing doesn't make sense to me, particularly in term of efficiency. I totally agree the xeno should be able to breed without a queen. Even if you see it as an "animal" and not a weapon! Being the ultimate survivor means it must have a way to iterate the species to further generations UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Now I liked the idea of "digestion and reproduction" (as odd as that sounds...) but my point was: if you are going to all that (chemical) touble of reducing the host to components in order to turn it into an egg, you'd be better of creating a xeno in the first place. After all, doing so would mean completelly recreating the xeno genome from scratch from the host's bio material (Ok, possibly keeping some of the host's DNA in the process? to me it only makes sense if the xeno is INDEED a bioweapon)! Anyway, just my two cents for what it's worth...

i think theres gonna be some twists Ridley is to much of a genius to make his return to sci-fi predictable and the scriptwriter is the guy who worked on Lost which was jam packed with twists and turns, i think the promo clips reveal a story but when we all watch the movie we wil all be surprised, The one thing that i think totally stands out is the helmet of the engineer from side profile looks exactly like an elephant with a clipped trunk. Is this engineer the creator of all animals and humans? Also in the movie shaw has to carry out a self surgery on herself where she takes out a slug like worm alien creature, this creature is obviously one of the engineers creations as well, maybe the engineer is the good guy and there is another race of beings in the film that hate him and the humans, looking forward to finding out.

Turning people into eggs is not efficient reproduction since you need 3 parties. The alien to make the egg The victim to become the egg The victim for the face hugger

I will chuck this in but might not get read, I think the point of all the mucking about with hosts and eggs and huggers is to control the big agressive mobile stage a bit for the creators. I think the Xenomorphs are primarily weapons therefore they require a more dormant stage otherwise rounding them up would be tricky. Its like when we genetically modify animals in labs, we change genes so they cant reproduce or require certain chemicals to be administered which would ordinarily be produced naturally. Its control. If you make the perfect Bio-weapon you must have a form of control plus as an egg you get to move them around for the next attack. Also nature isnt always about being efficient concessions are made all the time, The way the eye works is actually highly impractical as there is a massive black spot due to the optical nerve but a nice big chunk of our brains processes the info and give us a whole image. Many biologists and physitians have commented on how this would mot be the first choice of how to make an eye.

You should all wiki Ants and their reproductive process. Really the xenos are just big mutant killer space ants.....kind of.

Hello there folks, thought I would join in the chat. It's my understanding that the crew people being 'cocooned' is only a precedent from a redundancy factor that the species defaults to if one of it's kind is found itself isolated from relative 'proximity' to the colony proper it goes into a kind of 'self-protective mode' and creates a suitable set of conditions so that only a Qeen facehugger/embryo will be 'hatched' and mature inside the given host during its incubation process to either form a Queen Chestburster first or other wise in the case of the situation aboard the Nostromo create anothe 'Soldier/Grunt' Alien from Bret as he was incubated first, then together the Two Aliens once one addition is matured into a fully-grown adult will take steps to begin rebuilding a new colony and 'nurture/culture' the 'Dallas-egg' as a Queen facehugger-come-incubated embryo-come-chestburster-come fully-grown Alien Queen. The fact that Ripley was stillaliev during these events signified that the Alien 'Grunt' was just following default instinctive 'reasoning' and set about in its systimatic fation to 'genetically engineer' events for its self and self preservation both for it's own mortallity and survival but also that of The Colony. By it's own accounts and from it's own instinctive point-of-view, it was the last possibly of it's species and 'all other priorities are recinded' in the words of ash, even possibly it's own existence. How do we not know it would not have sacraficed itself as a kind of food source after helping to forge a new queen egg/liniage or even if not that then it was probably intended to cocoon Lambert and Parker both too in the asumption that at some point a rescue team would eventually encounter the Nostromo and several eggs would be waiting to hatch and attack the unsuspecting search-and-rescue party who then would be the unwitting participants caught-up in the species graduall spread and eventual proliferation down the generations and in time, millenia even, throught the galaxy...