Is The Dire Wolf Back From The Dead?

 Is The Dire Wolf Back From The Dead? 

Colossal Biosciences Claims It Has “Resurrected” the Dire Wolf—Scientists Aren’t Buying It

In a headline-grabbing—and fiercely debated—announcement on Monday, biotech company Colossal Biosciences declared it had “resurrected” the dire wolf, a massive predator that once roamed North America before disappearing around 10,000 years ago. “For the first time in human history,” the $10 billion company proclaimed on its website, “Colossal has successfully restored a once-eradicated species through the science of de-extinction.”

But the bold claim was quickly met with skepticism. “Colossal Biosciences did not revive dire wolves,” wrote University of Maine paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill in a series of posts on Bluesky. “To see this work carried out with such a casual disregard not only for truth, but for life itself, is genuinely abhorrent to me.”

Colossal’s mission centers on reviving extinct “charismatic megafauna,” including the woolly mammoth, dodo, Tasmanian tiger—and now, the dire wolf. But scientists say what the company unveiled isn’t a true dire wolf, and may not qualify as authentic de-extinction.

For the launch, Colossal granted exclusive access to Time and The New Yorker, revealing three wolf pups named Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. With snow-white fur and imposing builds, the pups resemble the dire wolves of Game of Thrones fame—an association further cemented by a reported collaboration with author George R. R. Martin, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

To create the pups, scientists edited the genome of gray wolves, introducing select traits thought to resemble the extinct dire wolf. Embryos were then implanted into surrogate dog mothers. “It’s not a dire wolf,” wrote science journalist Carl Zimmer. “It’s a gray wolf clone with 20 dire wolf gene edits—and a few dire wolf traits.”

Critics argue the edits only address a fraction of the genetic distinctions between dire and gray wolves, focusing largely on appearance. The approach mirrors Colossal’s earlier project to create a “woolly mouse”—a rodent engineered to mimic a mammoth’s coat. Pontus Skoglund, a geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute, remarked: “Would a chimpanzee with 20 gene edits be human?” He estimated the pups are, at best, “1/100,000th dire wolf.”

Further complicating matters, a 2021 study published in Nature concluded that dire wolves aren’t actually wolves. Genetic evidence suggests they belonged to a distinct North American canine lineage that diverged from gray wolves over five million years ago. Study co-author Angela Perri told Science that dire wolves were likely more akin to African jackals and may have looked “like a giant, reddish coyote.”

However, Colossal’s latest research appears to challenge that. Chief science officer Beth Shapiro—who also co-authored the 2021 study—told New Scientist that her team sequenced a full dire wolf genome from newly recovered ancient DNA. She claims their data show dire wolves shared 99.5% of their DNA with gray wolves and even interbred with their ancestors around 2.6 million years ago. She also noted genetic markers for light-colored fur. Still, none of these findings have been published in a peer-reviewed journal or preprint.

Amid the controversy, questions about the purpose and ethics of the project persist. The pups are reportedly being raised in a secret, 800-hectare facility somewhere in the U.S. While Colossal insists dire wolves once played a key ecological role, critics point out that the ecosystems they once thrived in—and their prey—are long gone.

Some conservationists warn such efforts risk diverting resources from preserving today’s endangered species. “If I had a choice,” University of Otago geneticist Nic Rawlence told the New Zealand Science Media Centre, “I’d want companies like Colossal to develop de-extinction technology—but use it to conserve what we have left.”