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T. rex has been resurrected as a fashion item after a 68-million-year hiatus.
On the 10th, USA Today reported that creative agency VML, genomics engineering firm Organoid Company, and biotech company Lab-Grown Leather produced the world’s first leather handbag using collagen extracted from dinosaur fossils.
It’s the first tangible result of a project announced a year ago last April.
Polish designer Michal Hadas’s techwear brand Enfant Reve handled the handbag’s design.
The bag, currently on display alongside a Tyrannosaurus sculpture at the ArtZOO Museum in Amsterdam, will go up for auction after the exhibition closes on May 11.
The starting bid is about $500,000 (roughly 737,850,000 KRW).
The team reconstructed genetic information from trace amounts of collagen found in T. rex fossils, then cultured cells and grew leather in the lab.
Che Konon, CEO of Lab-Grown Leather, called the material “an eco-friendly alternative that could replace natural leather” and described it as a technical breakthrough that could deliver high-quality leather without slaughtering animals.
But some scientists have voiced skepticism. Thomas R. Holtz Jr., a paleontologist at the University of Maryland, warned that the collagen recovered from fossils likely comes from inside bone, not skin, and that matching proteins don’t guarantee the recreation of leather’s actual fiber structure.
Responding to the controversy, Organoid Company CEO Thomas Mitchell said, “New attempts always attract criticism,” adding that such scrutiny is the foundation of scientific progress.
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