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I was reading about dinosaur bones and now I've made leather out of eggshells and this rabbit hole gets very weird, but I promise I will bring it all together at the end.

And and then there's the moldy fish tank with a bone in it.

I was reading some papers that scientists have been finding collagen in dinosaur bones.

And this is very surprising because collagen is a protein and the peptide bonds that hold together the protein typically have a halflife of about 500 years.

But dinosaur bones are millions of years old.

So all these papers got me thinking about whether or not you could stabilize collagen for millions of years.

And then I started wondering if I could stabilize collagen.

And that is how I found myself dumping a bunch of collagen supplements into a bowl and thinking about cross-linking them.

But the problem with collagen supplements is that they really often are not fulllength collagen and they're also kind of expensive.

But do you know where they get that collagen?

Eggshells or fishkins.

But that is for another video.

So that is how I found myself blowing the insides out of a bunch of eggs.

Blowing out the insides is an art technique.

Dissolving the hard outer shell layer in vinegar so that I'm left with just the membranes is a me technique.

But I am left with thin sheets of collagen.

Also, I hate eggs.

And one of the most common ways to stabilize collagen is by making it into leather.

Because that is really what leather is, is it is just stabilized sheets of collagen.

It's just normally animal skin and hides, not eggshells.

Now, I hadn't made leather before, so I bought this very generic high tanning formula on the internet.

I'm not actually 100% sure what this stuff is.

The bottle says how many bear and deer hides it can tan, but it does not specify how many eggs it can tan.

Is it because no one has ever done this before?

I don't know who would ever do this other than me.

And that kind of worked, but dinosaur collagen definitely was not stabilized with like an orange bottle of goo.

So, I wanted to try some other DIY methods.

So, how about tanning with metals?

Now, chrome tanning is super common, but the internet made it seem really scary and dangerous.

So, instead, I decided to try alum tanning.

And really, what can't alum do?

It can help keep pickles crisp.

It can purify water via fauculation.

And it can apparently tan leather if I mix them up into a gloopy paste with some baking soda and then sort of shove my eggshell membranes into it.

Checking in on it a few days later.

It definitely did something, but it did not smell good.

I washed it in borax to neutralize the solution and then checked back in on it again and it kind of folded up on itself in a weird thing, but you know, it was a stable piece of leather that wasn't just disintegrating.

Look, it's not the most exciting, but like this has been sitting out in my studio for months now, and it's fine.

Can you see it?

It's not disintegrating, so that's good.

The problem is that it just didn't look like leather, right?

Imagine leather in your head.

It does not look like my little alum egg.

We got bark in the mail.

Bark tanning feels like how you're supposed to make leather, you know?

I steeped oak bark.

I gently simmered it to make a tea, and then I let my membrane sit in it.

It feels very woodsy.

Probably because it's made of trees.

That's probably why it felt woodsy.

And because this is a video about dinosaurs while these were soaking, I actually went to go look up a diagram of how tanning works.

And I I actually think this diagram helped me get it.

So this is the peptide chain backbone.

And these are the tannin molecules.

They are reacting with the carboxyl groups of the peptide bonds via hydrogen bonds.

And they're sort of holding them together a little bit like the suspension cables on a bridge.

This is also similar to how alum and other metal salts stabilize collagen in those kinds of tanning.

So that's what's happening in tanning.

And while it's definitely not the same thing that's happening in the dinosaur bones, it might be sort of related to stabilizing the collagen molecularly.

It's maybe somewhat closely related.

Now, these membranes looked so beautiful.

They looked so much like leather.

But the problem was that when I did let them sit out, the tanning solution was kind of astringent and it really pulled a lot of the like oil and moisture out of them.

So they got a little crunchy.

So to get them to be nice and supple, I have to put some of that hydration back in.

I did that first by soaking them in egg yolks.

And while that did feel very wast in this situation, and it did make them feel nice and supple, the process was kind of disgusting.

Remember, I don't like eggs.

So I also bought some neatsfoot oil.

This is what you're actually supposed to use to soften, lubricate, and moisturize leather.

So I rubbed that in.

And then these came out kind of truly beautiful to me.

Look at these.

And because this video is about dinosaurs, I have this beautiful oak tanned egg leather that I will make something out of.

So, this 2024 paper talks about how collagen in dinosaur bones might be stabilized in a way that keeps it around for millions of years.

This peptide bond right here is prone to being attacked by water because this carbonial carbon really wants to bind with an oxygen.

But collagen backbones have a lot of twists in them, which means that there's actually another oxygen hanging around nearby with some lone pairs of electrons that they can share.

It's this one.

It can share some of its electron density with that original carbon and prevent it from being hydrayed.

This could help it last for millions of years rather than just being broken apart.

Now, look, the dinosaur collagen that scientists have found was most likely not tanned like leather.

I'm not trying to suggest that.

I'm just saying that it was also stabilized at the molecular level.

And that's how I justified these two wildly divergent science experiments being in the same video.

But what do you make with super thin egg tanned leather that could potentially be around for millions of years?

This is egg project runway.

Huh?

This is like a geometry problem.

I'm making this too difficult.

I'm trying to make a a round thing flat just to make it round again.

Are we seeing the vision?

Oh, come on.

I mean, tell me that's not the cutest egg leather jacket you've ever seen.

Originally, there was a point where I thought I was going to make myself a dress out of this, and then for a lot of reasons, that didn't happen.

Look, I am unreasonably proud of this.

It might simultaneously be the cutest and weirdest thing I've ever crafted.

I still haven't named it.

Needs a name.

Do you have a name suggestion for my tenn?

Now, these membranes are still very thin.

They're between 0.01 and 0.7 mm thick.

So even though this leather is tanned, it is oiled.

It is well cared for.

It's still super thin and so it's easy to tear.

This is much more of an art piece than it is a functional piece.

I actually don't know that I could make thinner leather.

But what about thicker?

It's an ostrich bone.

It's a dinosaur.

What if a dinosaur died right next to an oak tree and then bam, dino collagen leather?

Can you see all the air bubbling out of this?

Could this preserve this bone for millions of years?

I will literally never find out because I'm not going to be around that long.

But I will check back in in a month.

Okay, real talk.

It's like that's not actually the test.

I got this piece of marrow bone at the pet store.

This is what we're actually going to test.

I'm I'm going to see if it actually preserves this.

And this doesn't go bad.

It's not a real dinosaur, but it was an easy to obtain and replicable sample.

We're just gonna scoot scoot that right in there.

Okay, we'll check back on this in a month.

God, it's so gross.

So, it's been about 5 weeks that these have been sitting in here.

I mean, it's kind of like a kombucha scobby.

Oh my god.

Did it tan?

No way.

No way.

Did it t Oh no, it's tearing.

But look at that.

It almost looks like leather.

But gosh, is it gross.

So, this is my marrow bone.

This is not tanning how I hoped it would.

It turned brown, but it's just gross.

I think I assumed the bone marrow would tan, but it did not really.

Oh, is this too gross for the internet?

Can I go back to my adorable egg?

Where's my emotional support egg in a leather jacket?

Actually, final thoughts on that bone purse.

Oak tanning does apparently take weeks if you're tanning like a sheet of skin, and so I do anticipate that's going to take longer.

So, I will continue to keep that from getting too gross and refilling it with oak tea.

I guess just strangest experiment I've done in a long time.

But after all of that, I actually feel pretty good about this oak tanned leather in all of its different states and forms.

I figured out how to make oak tanned leather in different colors, in different sort of sizes and shapes and softnesses, and I finally figured out how to make it in a method that allowed me to create the tiniest little leather jacket for an egg.

I am open to suggestions for other things to make out of this.

I think I learned enough through this process that I could make bigger batches.

I don't think that this is going to be a structural leather.

I think this is something that will be much more art forward.

I love a good science craft project.

And I'm sure there are some other talented science crafters out there who can take this even farther than I could.

My tiny little aviator egg will always be my favorite, though.

I love this kind of rabbit hole that we were talking about dinosaur bones and then suddenly I was making a leather jacket for an egg.

This is what science is all about for me is asking questions.

And I got to ask some real weird ones here.

Happy Earth Month.

By the way, if you want to see another video about what to do with waste products, you can check out PBS North Carolina's new video on Charlotte's Crush Truck over on their YouTube channel.