They have done it! It’s something that seems straight out of a blockbuster scifi movie that Hollywood put out but in this case, it’s real. A biotech company, Colossal Biosciences, says it has bred three animals with key physical features of the dire wolf — a species that has been extinct for more than 12,000 years. Colossal Biosciences it used novel gene-editing technology to alter gray wolf DNA that led to the birth of the pups. Dire wolves recently featured prominently in the HBO series Game of Thrones. Colossal says it extracted dire wolf DNA from two fossils — a roughly 13,000-year-old tooth found in Ohio and a 72,000-year-old inner ear bone discovered in Idaho.
Colossal also announced that it had bred four cloned red wolves, the most endangered wolf species in the world, and said its technology could be used to help threatened animal populations across the globe rebound. But some in the scientific community object to the Dallas-based firm’s claim to have returned the dire wolf — or Aenocyon dirus — from extinction with its process of using genetically modified gray wolf embryos. The company used what it learned about dire wolves from that ancient DNA to modify the cells of the modern gray wolf, which it says is the closest living relative to the prehistoric species. Colossal scientists made 20 edits to the gray wolf genome — including 15 edits in 14 genes that were the “exact extinct variants” — to create animals with dire wolf traits such as larger bodies and thicker, paler coats.
That modified DNA was then used to create embryos, which were implanted into surrogate female dogs. Three healthy pups with dire wolf traits were born, which the company named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi. Still, critics have questioned whether the three dire wolf pups are in fact the real thing — or a version of the gray wolf meant to look like it. In response to some of the criticism, the company said it was not trying to create an exact genetic replica of the dire wolf, but rather produce animals that can fill the void that dire wolves left in nature and carry the animal characteristics that were lost when they went extinct.