Lab-grown Tyrannosaurus leather: More chicken than dinosaur?
A handbag is as the "world's first T. rex leather product". But scientists are questioning its authenticity. In early April, the Artis Zoo Museum in
A handbag is as the "world's first T. rex leather product". But scientists are questioning its authenticity. In early April, the Artis Zoo Museum in Amsterdam unveiled a handbag alongside a massive dinosaur skeleton — one made of "lab-grown T. rex leather". Polish fashion label Enfin Leve designed the bag as part of its line of experimental clothing. But it was the material, not the design, that drew the most attention. "It has a character unlike anything we've handled. Dense, primal, operating on its own logic," the label wrote on social media. The company plans to auction the handbag on June 11 in Paris. But what exactly do they mean by "T. rex leather"? Dinosaurs died out about 66 million years ago. In the 1990s, the film "Jurassic Park" sparked a global fascination with dinosaurs and fueled speculation about whether scientists could clone them. Researchers have consistently said no: The DNA breaks down over time. Debate over dinosaur proteins About 20 years ago, researchers in Montana discovered parts of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. The find drew even more attention after paleontologist Mary Higby Schweitzer announced that her team had identified soft tissue remains, including protein fragments, inside the bones. Up until then, scientists had largely believed such organic material couldn't survive for millions of years.
Science makes it clear that cloning dinosaurs using paleo-DNA like in the 'Jurassic Park' films is pure science-fiction Image: United Archives/picture alliance Yet many researchers remained skeptical. Some argued that bacteria colonizing the bones may have created the structures Schweitzer identified. The debate over exactly what her team found continues today. The Amsterdam handbag project relies on data from that Montana discovery, according to a preprint by Thomas Mitchell and Ernst Wolvetang, founders of The Organoid Company, which helped develop the lab-grown leather. "It's like having a puzzle, but you only have a few pieces, and then you have to fill in the rest," Mitchell said, describing the process in an Instagram video. The central question remains whether the available fragments actually came from a T. rex. Postdoctoral researcher Jan Dekker from the University of Turin has his doubts. He's specialized in paleoproteomics — the scientific study of proteins from ancient remains. "Dinosaur proteins are very controversial," Dekker told DW. "The boundary that we usually hold up for how long proteins can survive was only recently pushed back to around 20 million in very exceptional circumstances." T. rex, however, died out more than three times that long ago. With that in mind, Dekker doesn't believe the handbag can contain any actual dinosaur material.
The BriefWire