Resurrecting the dire wolf: Scientific breakthrough or misleading marketing stunt?

The dire wolves live on Colossal's 2,000+ acre secure expansive ecological preserve, which is certified by the American Humane Society and registered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The wolves are continuously monitored through on-site live cameras, security personnel, and drone tracking to ensure their safety and welfare..(Photo: Colossal Biosciences)

By Ed Stoddard

11 Apr 2025

Real or hybrid, news of the resurrection of the dire wolf is a big deal with huge implications for conservation efforts, the advancement of science, and the business of bioscience.

As Easter looms, another resurrection story is currently getting a lot of play.

The dire wolf, a hulking canid that roamed the Americas until it went extinct 10,000 years ago has been raised from the dead, according to Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences, the only biotech company in the world dedicated to “de-extinction”.

Famed for its role in Game of Thrones, a white dire wolf graced the cover of Time magazine this week with a headline trumpeting the species’ return.

“Colossal Biosciences, the world’s only de-extinction company ... announces the rebirth of the once extinct dire wolf, the world’s first successfully de-extincted animal,” Colossal said in a press release.

Read more: Colossal Announces World’s First De-Extinction: Birth of Dire Wolves

But are the three pups — Romulus, Remus, and their sister Khaleesi — really dire wolves? And if so, why is that important?

What was the dire wolf?

The species’ scientific name is Canis (Aenocyon) dirus. The dire wolf was the largest candid in the Americas during the late Pleistocene — which ended 11,700 years ago — and the early Holocene. It went extinct about 10,000 years ago.

How big were they? One 2006 study concluded that “... dire wolves were on average similar in size to the largest extant grey wolves (60-68 kg)”.

Read more: New Body Mass Estimates for Canis Dirus, the Extinct Pleistocene Dire Wolf

Colossal says on its website that dire wolves “... appeared to be more dense than agile, with greater muscle mass and a bulkier build than other Pleistocene-era canids or those that still roam the Earth today”.

According to its calculations, the dire wolf was on average about 20kg heavier than extant species with larger teeth and jaws, a wider head and snout and more muscular shoulders.

Shown at 15 days old are two male dire wolves, Romulus and Remus, born by surrogate dog mothers from fertilized and implanted genetically-edited eggs with the ancient DNA of dire wolves. (Photo: Colossal Biosciences)

Read more: Dire wolf — a powerful presence

Has it been resurrected?

This question has really stirred a hornet’s nest.

The company said it had: “Extracted and sequenced ancient DNA from two dire wolf fossils” and then did “... multiplex gene editing to a donor genome from their closest living relative, the grey wolf”.

But some experts see something else in dire wolf clothing.

“On their social media platforms, Colossal used the words ‘resurrected’, ‘reborn’, ‘brought back to life using ancient DNA’. This is extremely misleading sensationalism. They are not dire wolves, there is not a fragment of actual dire wolf DNA in them,” Sandra Lai, a senior scientist at Oxford University’s WildCRU research unit, told Daily Maverick.

“What was produced is a genetically modified grey wolf that superficially looks like what the still extinct ‘dire wolf’ would have (supposedly) looked like. They compared the grey wolf genome and the parts of dire wolf genome they had obtained, identified gene variants specific for the dire wolf DNA and edited grey wolf genes to match those sequences to recreate some physical traits of dire wolves.”

This echoes what other experts have said, and that’s not nearly as cool.

Read more: Experts dispute claim dire wolf brought back from extinction

Other scientists have described the animals as a “hybrid” — so, like a mule, which is a cross between a horse and a donkey.

But some experts say the “hybrid” talk is a distraction from a real scientific breakthrough overseen by renowned researchers such as Beth Shapiro, the chief scientific officer at Colossal.

“On the board of Colossal are some of the best paleo-biologists on the planet. These folks are like serious scientists and so it is surprising that the scientific community is in an uproar about what’s being done,” Chrishen Gomez, a PHD candidate at Oxford who specialises in mammalian conservation genomics, told Daily Maverick.

“This is as far as science can go. The big critique is ‘why are they calling it a dire wolf’, but this is as close as we are going to get to a dire wolf for now. It is a hybrid of some sort because it’s not a grey wolf, it has real key functional genes that came from the dire wolf. The test is only going to be when the animals grow up and you do morphological tests between the two.”

What other species are in line for resurrection?

The woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo are also on Colossal’s “de-extinction"” list.

Colossal says its “... landmark de-extinction project will be the resurrection of the woolly mammoth — or, more specifically, a cold-resistant elephant with all of the core biological traits of the woolly mammoth. It will walk like a woolly mammoth, look like one, sound like one, but most importantly it will be able to inhabit the same ecosystem previously abandoned by the Mammoth’s extinction.”

So it will walk like a duck and sound like a duck, or a bird with a duck’s “cold resistance” and the core biological traits of a duck. That is not quite a duck, but presumably it is close.

The Tasmanian tiger or thylacine was last found in the wild in the 1920s. The flightless dodo — which was only found in Mauritius — went extinct in the late 17th century.

Both were clearly wiped out by humans, which brings us to our next question.

Does any of this matter?

While having dinner with friends this week, this topic came up and one of them said to this correspondent: “Why would you bring back a dire wolf? What purpose does it serve? It went extinct for a reason!”

That gets to the point — why was there a mass extinction event of mostly large mammals outside Africa in the late Pleistocene?

The general public is not widely plugged into the scientific debates on this issue — which is understandable — so it may surprise some readers to learn that many scientists have reached the conclusion that the Pleistocene extinctions were caused by prehistoric human hunters.

The debate broadly pits scientists who see climate change as the main trigger versus those who subscribe to the “overkill” hypothesis. And there is a middle road that sees climate change and human predation acting in concert in ways that proved particularly lethal to big animals.

The point at the end of this spear tip is that if you accept the overkill theory then the Pleistocene extinctions — and the ecological consequences that emerged in their wake — mark the beginning of what many scientists call the “Sixth Extinction” which is currently unfolding across our burning planet.

So if humans are responsible for not only the demise of the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger but also the dire wolf and woolly mammoth, then restoring such species — and the landscapes they inhabited — is one way to begin reversing the Sixth Extinction and human-caused biodiversity loss.

“We can begin to turn the clock back to a time when Earth lived and breathed more cleanly and naturally,” Colossal says. “Think big. Woolly mammoths. Hippos. Elephants. Giraffes. Rhinoceri. Large bovines.”

Will dire wolves and mammoths roam again?

This is where things get tricky. Humanity in the 21st century is rubbing up against extant species that have been translocated or “rewilded” in ways that are often triggering conflict between people and animals.

Slovakia now plans a massive cull of brown bears, a species that has seen its population surge because of rewilding initiatives.

Read more: Loaded for Bear: Planned cull in Slovakia brings a harsh African reality to Europe

And a tsunami of human/elephant conflict has been unleashed on the bloody borders of Malawi’s Kasungu National Park, where 263 elephants were translocated in 2022.

Read more: Loaded for Bear: How would you like it if someone dumped 263 elephants in your backyard?

Imagine throwing dire wolves and woolly mammoths into this mix?

“People don’t even put up with modern wolves, which are about two-thirds the size of dire wolves, so I don’t see that species being let loose,” Adam Hart, a conservation scientist at the University of Gloucestershire and an expert on human-wildlife conflict, told Daily Maverick.

“The reality is that those animals are extinct, those landscapes have changed, and we are going through an extinction where we arguably should be putting our resources into habitat protection and protecting what we have.”

Oxford’s Lai noted the problem of introducing GMO species into an altered landscape: “The dire wolf existed in an ecosystem that doesn’t exist any more; its prey also went extinct. The ecological consequences of introducing genetically modified animals into modern ecosystems is unknown — how is it going to compete with the other predators? What is it going to feed on?”

If it starts feeding on people, that will be a problem.

Is there money to be made from de-extinction?

Colossal certainly believes so, and it thinks big!

Privately held, the company has a mix of investors — WG Global, At One Ventures, Draper Associates, and individuals like Peter Jackson. It has raised more than $435-million in funding since it was launched in 2021 and has been valued at over $10-billion.

Read more: Colossal Secures $200M in Series C Funding From TWG Global on the Back of Numerous World’s First Scientific Breakthroughs on Path to De-Extinction

So, how do you spin cash from being the leading brand in the de-extinction game?

“Today, the woolly mammoth. But tomorrow, maybe the cure for blindness, eradication of tumours and elimination of disease. The potential of bioscience is almost unlimited,” Colossal says.

In other words, its genetic engineering and other activities could unlock medical advances that could presumably be very profitable while providing massive benefits in the process.

As to the critters themselves, think Jurassic Park and ecotourism. Bird watchers would flock to Mauritius to see a dodo and animal enthusiasts would pay big bucks to go on a game drive in the Yukon to view mammoths — or their variant — in a reserve.

They may not be precise replicas, but partial resurrections will, in the eyes of many, be worth the price of admission.

The bottom line is that the business model — and the science — behind the dire wolf or its hybrid are not mad ones howling at the full moon. DM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

Business Maverick