Reddit reviews The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

Micro evolution and macro evolution are the same thing, do you understand? It is hard for us idiot humans to visualize changes over hundreds of thousands of years, but it doesn't make it less true.

I recommend reading this book, which goes over the science about evolution, and the 39 branches from the earliest organism to get to us: https://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-Tale-Pilgrimage-Dawn-Evolution/dp/0544859936

This is a bit like asking which evolved first: males or females. Neither - they evolved at the same time.

With very few and rare exceptions, every organism is the same species as its parents. You are the same species as your mother, and she is the same species as her mother, and so on. It may be that you are the same species as your mother, and her mother's mother, and so on, but it may not be the case that you are the same species as your 40,000th great-grandmother. But your 40,000 great-grandmother would be the same species as your 40,001 great-grandmother. There never was a time when, for example, an Australopithecus mother gave birth to a human baby, in the same way that you never went to sleep one night as a child and woke as a fully-mature adult.

If your question is which came first: the chicken, or the chicken egg, then the answer is neither. Chickens, chicken feathers, chicken eggs, and chicken eyeballs all evolved together, with each generation being the same species as the previous generation, whereby major species-level changes only become apparent when comparing many generations apart.

If you still can't wrap your head around this and are serious about understanding it, check out the book The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins. It's written specifically for those who are struggling with the gradual nature of change over immense periods of time.