Dinosaur Purse? Scientists Aren’t Buying This T. Rex Leather Claim

Three companies have joined forces to develop a new luxury alternative to traditional leather. That sounds ordinary—except the material they’re trying to create is anything but. On Friday, April 25, creative agency VML and biotech companies Lab-Grown Leather Ltd. and The Organoid Company announced a “first-of-its-kind” partnership. Their goal: to create a cruelty-free, environmentally friendly, high-quality alternative to traditional leather, purportedly using Tyrannosaurus rex DNA. According to a company statement, the partnership aims to harness “the biology of the past to create the luxury materials of the future.” The catch is that they haven’t sufficiently explained exactly how they’re going to do that—and some researchers are very skeptical. “Using fossilized T-Rex collagen as a blueprint, the production process will involve engineering cells with synthetic DNA,” according to the statement. “Unlike other bio-based alternatives, Lab-Grown Leather’s ‘scaffold-free’ approach allow ... Read full article.