Scientists Revive the Dire Wolf, or Something Close

[Polybius]

Source: NY Times

For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series “Game of Thrones.”

In 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve DNA from the fossils of dire wolves, which went extinct about 13,000 years ago. With the discovery of additional DNA, the Colossal researchers have now edited 20 genes of gray wolves to imbue the animals with key features of dire wolves. They then created embryos from the edited gray-wolf cells, implanted them in surrogate dog mothers and waited for them to give birth.

The result is three healthy wolves — two males that are 6 months old and one female that is 2 months old, named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi — that have some traits of dire wolves.

They are big, for one thing, and have dense, pale coats not found in gray wolves. Colossal, which was valued at $10 billion in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern United States.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wolf-deextinction.html