The baby chicks were shifting and starting to pip—or trying to hatch. But not from an egg.
Instead, these chickens were growing inside transparent 3D-printed plastic cups at the Dallas headquarters of Colossal Biosciences.
The biotech company … claimed it has developed a “fully artificial egg” as part of its effort to resurrect extinct avian species, including birds like the dodo and the giant moa.
But “artificial eggshell” would probably be a better description for the invention. It’s an oval-shaped printed lattice, coated inside with a special silicone-based membrane that lets in oxygen, just as a real eggshell does.
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… Colossal’s fluffed-up assertion of having created the “first-ever shell-less incubation system” is what’s raising hackles among the small flock of scientists who’ve been working on the technology for years.
“Clearly an overstatement,” says Katsuya Obara, at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, who in 2024 hatched chickens from beneath transparent plastic film. “The technology here is essentially a modification of existing methods.”
