Bringing a super-sized canine back from extinction after 12,500 years sounds like the start of a movie where the special effects include gnawed flesh and buckets of fake intestines, but apparently some people decided it was a good idea, and now the world has three dire wolves living in a secret location in the US.
The “some people” behind this extreme Game of Thrones fandom are the biotech company Colossal Biosciences, who used the DNA of the common gray wolf, gene-editing, and domestic dog surrogates to conceive Romulus, Remus, and their younger sister, Khaleesi. They look exactly the way any mother of dragons would hope; huge, white, and just sort of awesome.
“I could not be more proud of the team. This massive milestone is the first of many coming examples demonstrating that our end-to-end de-extinction technology stack works,” said CEO of Colossal Ben Lamm.
“Our team took DNA from a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies. 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 and its broader impact on conservation.”
This isn’t the first time Colossal Biosciences has made the headlines, it previously engineered a Colossal Woolly Mouse – think a mouse wearing a very shaggy hipster coat – to resemble a mammoth phenotype, and used the computational analysis of 59 woolly, Columbian, and steppe mammoth genomes ranging from 3,500 to over 1,200,000 years old to do it. The company has its critics, who argue that the dire wolves are the genetic equivalent of normal wolves in fancy dress. They might look like dire wolves, but the dire wolf DNA that still exists today would never be good enough to make a real genetic clone.
The motives of Colossal Bioscience aren’t just making a social media fuss and suddenly owning awesome pets. The company wants to use its findings to help preserve the creatures that populate our earth now for future generations.
“The de-extinction of the dire wolf and an end-to-end system for de-extinction is transformative and heralds an entirely new era of human stewardship of life,” said Dr. Christopher Mason, a scientific advisor and member of the board of observers for Colossal.
“The same technologies that created the dire wolf can directly help save a variety of other endangered animals as well. This is an extraordinary technological leap in genetic engineering efforts for both science and for conservation as well as preservation of life, and a wonderful example of the power of biotechnology to protect species, both extant and extinct.”
As for these dire wolves, Colossal Biosciences has worked with the American Humane Society and the USDA to vet its 2,000+ acre preserve they call home, and like any good superstars have an entourage of staff to care for them.
Rachel Weber is the Senior Editorial Director of Games at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, and French Bulldogs. Those extra wrinkles on her face are thanks to going time blind and staying up too late finishing every sidequest in RPGs like Fallout and Witcher 3.
