A Dallas-based company announced Tuesday it hatched baby chicks from a 3D-printed silicone shell — and it wants to use that technology to bring back an extinct 12-foot-tall New Zealand bird.
Colossal Bioscience said it used a silicone-based membrane to mimic the breathing properties of real egg shells, which have a system of pores that bring in oxygen for the embryo.
The shell is crucial to bringing back the South Island giant moa — think a taller and hairier ostrich — which were birthed from massive eggs that no current bird can carry as a surrogate.
"The genome is the blueprint, but without a place to build, it's meaningless," Andrew Pask, chief biology officer at Colossal, said in a press release. "The artificial egg gives us that platform: controlled, scalable, and completely independent of a surrogate."
Previous attempts at hatching live chicks from artificial shells started in the 1980s, but required lots of pure oxygen that caused health issues for the birds, according to Colossal.
The giant moa were hunted to extinction some time in the 13th or 14th centuries by early Maori hunters in New Zealand. But researchers at Colossal aim to use fossils carrying traces of giant moa DNA to reconstruct the bird in a manner not too different from how dinosaurs were recreated in the Jurassic Park films.
Colossal was created in 2021 and is also working to bring back the wooly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, dodo bird and bluebuck.
The company received national attention in 2025 with its announcement that it had brought back the dire wolf, an ancient wolf native to North America. The company said it created three dire wolf pups — Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi — by modifying the genes of a gray wolf and using a domestic dog as a surrogate.
That sparked debate among scientists about whether the company had actually brought the dire wolf back from the dead, or merely created a grey wolf that is similar to what is believed to be the dire's appearance only.
Critics have also said the de-extinction project may turn attention away from preserving the animals that are here now.
Colossal attempted to address those concerns Tuesday, saying its artificial egg could be used for conservation efforts.
"The ability to incubate avian embryos outside a biological shell — at any size and in standard commercial incubators — is a capability conservation programs simply don't have today,” Matt James, chief animal officer at Colossal, said in the press release. “We're building it for the moa, but it's designed to support critically endangered species broadly."
Dylan Duke is KERA's Breaking News Reporter. Got a tip? Email Dylan Duke at dduke@kera.org.
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