Inside a lab in Dallas, bioengineer Trevor Snyder opens an incubator and lifts out a device that looks like a high-tech coffee pod: black, with a honeycomb base and a clear flat top. Nestled inside is a developing chicken embryo. Under light, Snyder points out a tiny heartbeat, a forming beak, developing wings and feathers — clear signs the 3D-printed plastic egg can support life.
Snyder and colleagues at Colossal Biosciences developed the artificial egg as part of an ambitious program to recreate extinct birds such as the dodo and the giant moa. Because modern birds that are closest to those extinct species lay eggs of very different sizes and structures, Colossal says natural surrogate eggs cannot host the embryos of these long-vanished animals. The moa’s egg, for example, was roughly the size of a football, far larger than eggs of its closest living relatives, and dodo eggs were slightly bigger than chicken eggs.
To learn what an egg must do to sustain an embryo, the team started with chickens. Colossal announced that more than two dozen chicks have hatched after incubating in their artificial eggs, which the company says proves the basic design works. The devices are engineered to replicate key egg functions — the honeycomb structure, for instance, is intended to admit oxygen while preventing leaks — and the company is already designing larger versions that could hold dodo- and moa-sized embryos.
Colossal’s broader plan is to create embryos from gene-edited cells of living relatives — Nicobar pigeons for the dodo and possibly emus for the moa — then place those genetically modified embryos inside artificial eggs to develop. The company has also talked about using artificial wombs for mammals it aims to resurrect, such as the woolly mammoth.
The project has drawn excitement from some scientists who see potential conservation uses. Paleobiologist Neil Gostling called the artificial-egg advance remarkable and said it could have applications beyond de-extinction, helping imperiled birds and reptiles that struggle to reproduce in captivity.
But the effort is controversial. Critics raise ecological and ethical concerns: habitats that allowed extinct species to thrive may no longer exist, and reintroductions could have unpredictable environmental impacts. Some scientists argue that what Colossal plans would not truly restore extinct species but rather engineer close approximations by altering modern animals’ genomes. “They’re not what I would actually call de-extinct species,” one critic said, calling them “poor facsimiles.”
Colossal rejects that critique. Snyder has said that advances in genetic engineering and developmental technology make it possible to reverse some human-caused extinctions and that extinction need not remain permanent. Company leaders describe their work as an ethical attempt to undo past damage.
The company’s claims and goals — including earlier statements about resurrecting other species — have intensified debate about feasibility, safety and responsibility in biotech-driven conservation. For now, the artificial-egg work remains a proof of concept: a novel way to replicate a complex natural structure and sustain embryonic development outside a bird’s body. Whether it will lead to ethically and ecologically sound revivals of long-lost species is a question that many scientists, ethicists and conservationists say still needs careful scrutiny.