Can an extinct species become de-extinct? While there have been fictional accounts in books, movies and more, it has always seemed like an impossibility. This has not stopped scientists from studying and theorizing ways to repopulate certain animal species.
The shocking return of the dire wolf may be a sign these efforts are succeeding. Is this a positive development or something we should be concerned about?
If you ever watched the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones or read George R.R. Martin’s books, you would be familiar with direwolves. They belonged to a canine species closely related to the wolf family but were depicted as bigger, stronger and more intelligent. The dire wolf pups were faithful companions to the Stark children and part of House Stark’s crest.
In reality, the dire wolf—with a slightly different spelling—roamed the plains of North and Â鶹´«Ã½AV America for tens of thousands of years. They were not as large as the fictional Game of Thrones canines but were about 25 per cent larger than grey wolves. Fossils were first discovered near Evansville, Ind., in 1854. This led American paleontologist Joseph Leidy to classify them in 1858 as Canis primaevus or Canis dirus.
The dire wolf has been extinct for over 10,000 years. How was it revived?
Credit goes to Colossal Biosciences. The company was founded in 2021 by entrepreneur Ben Lamm and well-known geneticist George Church, a professor at both MIT and Harvard University. Colossal reportedly employs more than 170 scientists and maintains laboratories in Boston, Dallas and Melbourne, Australia.
“Since launching in September 2021,” according to its Jan. 15 news release, “Colossal has raised $435 million in total funding. This latest round of capital places the company at a $10.2 billion valuation.”
Colossal’s main focus has been the de-extinction of certain species, including the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, northern white rhinoceros, dodo bird and dire wolf.
“Our team took DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies,” Lamm said in a news release. “It was once said, ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Today, our team gets to unveil some of the magic they are working on.”
Is this fundamentally different from the famous—or infamous—cloning of Dolly the sheep? According to TIME magazine’s editor-at-large, Jeffrey Kluger, it is.
“Colossal says its dire wolf work had key differences,” Kluger wrote on April 7. “Scientists first analyzed the genome of the dire wolves contained in the ancient tooth and skull. Comparing those genomes to that of the grey wolf—the dire wolf’s closest living relative—they identified 20 differences in 14 genes that account for the dire wolf’s distinguishing characteristics, including its greater size, white coat, wider head, larger teeth, more powerful shoulders, more muscular legs and characteristic vocalizations, especially howling and whining.”
Colossal also “harvested endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), which form the lining of blood vessels, from the bloodstreams of living grey wolves—a less invasive procedure than taking a tissue sample—and edited the 14 genes in their nuclei to express those 20 dire wolf traits.”
They engineered “two other genes that shut down black and red pigmentation, leading to the dire wolf’s characteristic light colour without causing any harm in the edited grey wolf genome.” Following this, “the edited nuclei were next extracted from the cells and inserted into denucleated grey wolf ova. The ova were left to grow into embryos, and 45 were transferred into the wombs of two domestic hound mixes.”
Within 65 days of gestation, the surrogate mothers gave birth to Romulus and Remus on Oct. 1, 2024. A third surrogate led to the birth of a sister, Khaleesi.
“TIME met the males (Khaleesi was not present due to her young age) at a fenced field in a U.S. wildlife facility on March 24,” Kluger wrote in a second piece, “on the condition that their location remain a secret to protect the animals from prying eyes.”
Video evidence of the dire wolf pups howling has also been released by Colossal. As The Hollywood Reporter put it, “the long-extinct canine—or at least a very close approximation of it—has been successfully brought back to life.”
The dire wolf’s re-emergence is still being studied and discussed. There is much to learn and understand. Some serious doubts remain, and with good reason.
“There’s a risk of death. There’s a risk of side effects that are severe,” Robert Klitzman, professor of psychiatry and director of the bioethics master’s program at Columbia University, told TIME. “There’s a lot of suffering involved in that. There are going to be miscarriages.”
There are also moral and philosophical concerns. Will the dire wolf be more violent than its predecessors or more docile? Should the repopulation process be used in a civilized society, and how far do we want to take it? Will de-extinction have a positive or negative effect on the animal kingdom? Should we be playing God, so to speak, and reviving extinct species?
There are no easy answers to these questions. Strong arguments could be made in favour of the dire wolf remaining extinct, as well as championing its de-extinction. Whether this will ultimately be a benefit to science and society remains to be seen.
Michael Taube is a political commentator, Troy Media syndicated columnist and former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He holds a master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics, lending academic rigour to his political insights.
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