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What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
This fascinating effort to restore the extinct moa, a giant bird, makes use of 3D printed eggshells. Which science fictional technology should I pick to write about? Both!
Which is the better science-fiction-made-real story?
— Bill Christensen (@Technovelgy) May 20, 2026
Bringing back extinct animals - or 3D printing an eggshell to gestate living animals? https://t.co/SdE1iNWngg pic.twitter.com/fOa0S0KPZD
In the novel Jurassic Park, author Michael Crichton describes a synthetic plastic eggshell to bring dinosaur "yolks" to term as living fossils:
"Then, in 1987, InGen bought an obscure company called Millipore Plastic Products in Nashville, Tennessee. This was an agribusiness company that had recently patented a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell. This plastic could be shaped into an egg and used to grow chick embryos. Starting the following year, InGen took the entire output of this millipore plastic for its own use."
And of course, Dr. David H Keller described a kind of artificial "egg" for gestating human babies: in A Biological Experiment, a short story by David H. Keller published in Amazing Stories in 1928, a method for producing thousands of human babies is described:
the human ovary could be kept alive and functioning under certain conditions in a glass vessel. Such an ovary was able to develop and expel a perfect ovum every twenty-eight days. By a process similar to that used with the eggs of the sea urchin, these ova could not only be kept alive but could be developed into fully matured babies. At a certain point in their growth, they were taken out of the sterile glucose solution and respiration started with a pulmometer. As far as any tests were concerned, they were just like all the other babies.
(Glass Vessel Ovary from 'A Biological Experiment' by Dr. David Keller)A great many of these synthetic babies were made and allowed to grow up under ideal conditions...
(Read more about synthetic babies)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/15/2026)
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Related News Stories - (" Biology ")
Biological War: A Scenario
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...' - Greg Bear, 1984.
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.' - Michael Crichton, 1990.
Black Fungus Blocks Radiation
'You were surrounded by Astrophage most of the time' - Andy Weir, 2021.
Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species
'...there was no one alive who had ever seen them. But they existed in the Life Bank.' - John Varley, 1977.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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