Dire Wolf ‘Back From Extinction’—Could Woolly Mammoths, Dinosaurs Be Next? – ryan

Texas-based “de-extinction” startup Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences have supposedly revived the long-extinct dire wolf. While excitement builds about the $10 billion startup’s news, experts say the “breakthrough” is not what it seems—plus, the resurrection of the dire wolf is raising broader ethical questions.

Colossal has been working on bringing back long-extinct species since it was founded in 2021. The biotechnology and genetic engineering company had set its sights on reviving the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, the northern white rhinoceros, the dodo bird, and the dire wolf—with the latter reportedly being brought back in October 2024.

How Was the Dire Wolf Brought Back?

Dire wolves, which originate from the Americas, went extinct between 12,000–13,000 years ago, but have supposedly now been reborn via biotechnology.

Colossal had retrieved more than 400 dire wolf skulls from the La Brea Tar Pits in California, along with a 13,000-year-old tooth from Ohio and a 72,000-year-old skull from Idaho, extracting DNA information from the extinct species’ fossilized bones and using gene editing to modify the DNA of their descendant, the gray wolf.

A cloning procedure was then applied to turn the cells into three animals, said to be near-perfect recreations of the dire wolf.

The animals include two males, Romulus and Remus, born in October 2024, and one female, Khaleesi, born in January, whose name is a reference to a main character from Game of Thrones.

Colossal scientists said that they reconstructed the dire wolf genome to a 91 percent match, leaving some key differences between the animal that once was and its new lab-originated iteration.

The new, gene-edited wolves have broader heads, more powerful jaws and shoulders than their original counterparts, but they do have a white coat consistent with pigmentation genes discovered in the fossil DNA.

These traits were reproduced by altering just 20 genes—though the behavioral differences were even more telling, according to coverage by TIME.

Colossal’s creations are being kept in an unknown location in the north of the U.S., where drones fly over the 2,000-acre preserve like clockwork to monitor for security and changes.

Despite their sweet looks, the three animals are reportedly unfriendly, even to the handlers who raised them from birth.

Have Dire Wolves Really Been Brought Back?

Although the news has caused plenty of excitement online, particularly among science and animal enthusiasts, experts warn to take the breakthrough with a pinch of salt.

After all, if the three animals were created in the 2020s, in a lab environment, using some ancient and some new DNA, are they the really the pure-blooded dire wolves who once roamed large expanses from Venezuela to Canada? Or are they something else entirely?

Nic Rawlence is an associate professor and director of the Otago Paleogentics Laboratory at the University of Otago’s department of Zoology.

Like other experts, Rawlence also has reservations about the recent strides Colossal has made.

“To truly de-extinct something, you would have to clone it,” Rawlence, who is based in New Zealand, said. “The problem is we can’t clone extinct animals because the DNA is not well enough preserved.

“Even if you sequence the genome, you can’t extract DNA from extinct animals in long enough chunks like you could with a living animal, so the only way to ‘de-extinct’ an animal is to use the new synthetic biology technology like CRISPR-cas9 where it acts like molecular scissors, and you can go and chop out a little bit of DNA and insert a new piece of DNA that effectively results in a genetic change.”

Indeed, Colossal’s project combined both ancient DNA analysis with CRISPR gene editing and modern surrogate breeding, which Rawlence warns could lead to inauthentic results.

“What Colossal have produced is a gray wolf with dire wolf-like characteristics, this is not a de-extincted dire wolf, rather it’s a ‘hybrid,’ and importantly, it’s what they think are the important dire wolf like characteristics,” the professor added.

With dire wolves diverging from gray wolves anywhere between 2.5 to 6 million years ago, they have a completely different genus to current gray wolves.

Colossal had compared the genomes of the dire wolf and the gray wolf, and from about 19,000 genes, they determined that just 20 changes in 14 genes gave them a real dire wolf.

“I would say such an animal is not a dire wolf and it’s not correct to say dire wolves have been brought back from extinction, it’s a modified gray wolf,” Anders Bergström, a professor at the University of East Anglia who specializes in the evolution of canines, said. “Twenty changes is not nearly enough.

“But it could get you a strange-looking gray wolf.”

What About the Woolly Mammoth? Dinosaurs?

In the last 500 million years, the Earth has experienced five major mass extinction events, known as the “Big Five,” and scientists are concerned about when we might enter a sixth.

Colossal, impassioned by the The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (ICUN) red list of 47,000 threatened species, wants to take things even further and help protect the species that are already here. The startup even ground their scientific exploration in “healing” the earth and offering extinct species “another day in the sun.”

Colossal’s latest work has sparked conversation about the animals that could be potentially helped or brought back—in full, or hybrid form—next.

Among them are the woolly mammoth, that Colossal has already announced plans to revive, and even dinosaurs, which the startup has not yet commented on, despite speculation.

Earlier this year it was thought that mammoth de-extinction could be a step closer after geneticists at Colossal created a woolly mouse, a genetically modified laboratory mice that exhibits mammoth-inspired traits.

Colossal had imbued the rodents with thicker, woolly coats, golden fur and other cold-climate adaptations, all of which are key characteristics of the woolly mammoth that went extinct around 4,000 years ago.

“The Colossal Woolly Mouse marks a watershed moment in our de-extinction mission,” said Colossal Biosciences co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm at the time. “This success brings us a step closer to our goal of bringing back the woolly.”

The breakthrough had drawn commentary from Elon Musk, who took to X on April 8 with a post about how much he would like a woolly mammoth—albeit, a small one—as a pet.

It seems that the biotech company has gained a seal of approval from the country’s wealthiest man, who has also been public about his interest in scientific exploration.

Colossal says its work could help modern conservation efforts, and that the firm are already using similar techniques to support critically endangered species like the red wolf, potentially helping to restore genetic diversity to populations with dangerously shallow gene pools.

The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that by 2050, 30 percent of the planet’s genetic diversity could be lost, but will efforts really be placed on helping the animals of the present day who face huge risks? Or in bringing back species from the past?

Much talk has been made about whether Colossal will try to bring back the dinosaur, a species that went extinct about 65 million years ago, but this could prove near impossible due to how old their fossils are.

As Rawlence explained, the age of a fossil can make a key difference in how feasible a de-extinction project around it is.

Ethical Risks and Challenges

Amid the excitement, concerns have been raised about whether the de-extinction of prehistoric animals is a good use of cash, and if these revived animals would even thrive in a habitat so different to the one they once lived in.

“How’s (Colossal’s dire wolf) going to learn to be a dire wolf?” Rawlence asked. “Currently, it’s a wolf running around in a paddock, and does the ecosystem it once lived in still exist?”

Professor Philip Seddon, also from the University of Otago added: “What Colossal has done is to introduce a small number of changes to the genetic material of a grey wolf to produce grey wolf pups with dire wolf features…So, hybrid grey wolves, or a GMO wolf…The pups will spend their days in a large enclosure being hand fed and closely monitored.”

For now, Colossal has said that the dire wolves will not be rewilded, likely due to their safety and the safety of the people and animals around them, but they plan to study the trio over their lifespans.

This has prompted some to consider whether the biotech firm will take an iterative approach to their work, meaning, they might continue to genetically modify the three animals, or their offspring, until they get as close as possible to the original dire wolf. Essentially, planting the seed for the species to be re-developed organically over time.

“Bringing back extinct animals is a controversial, but unquestionably fascinating topic,” Michael Knapp, an associate professor at University of Otago’s department of anatomy, said. “But it raises a plethora of questions ranging from ethics to technology.

“It is easy to brush attempts to bring back extinct species off as vanity projects without purpose in the real world, but that would ignore the technological breakthroughs behind these efforts.”

Still, Knapp added that while Colossal are correct in claiming the technology developed by them is suitable to contribute to conservation efforts, namely by editing out harmful mutations and introducing traits to boost resilience, the technology still has limitations.

“Genes that may be introduced to give a species more fur, might have other and unwanted functions as well,” he said.

For now, Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi remain closed off from the outer world and continue to be observed by veterinary staff and researchers at their undisclosed preserve.

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