A “de-extinction” company announced the “rebirth” of the “extinct dire wolf” on Monday. The company revealed the new dire wolves in a video on social media, celebrating the announcement as a “leap forward for science.”
In a Monday press release, Colossal Biosciences, which describes itself as the “world’s only de-extinction company,” said the “rebirth of the once extinct dire wolf” marks the “world’s first successfully de-extincted animal.”
Monday’s press release claimed that the dire wolf, which was featured in HBO’s “Game of Thrones” series, had “previously been extinct for over 12,500 years” prior to the company’s recent efforts.
Colossal Biosciences stated, “The successful birth of three dire wolves is a revolutionary milestone of scientific progress that illustrates another leap forward in Colossal’s de-extinction technologies and is a critical step on the pathway to the de-extinction of other target species.”
According to CNN, in addition to the dire wolf experiment, Colossal Biosciences has been working on bringing back the mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo bird since 2021.
In Monday’s press release, Colossal Biosciences explained that scientists were able to obtain dire wolf DNA from fossils in 2021. After obtaining the DNA from the fossils, the company was able to edit the DNA of gray wolves to include important features of the dire wolf with grey wolf cubs.
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“This massive milestone is the first of many coming examples demonstrating that our end-to-end de-extinction technology stack works,” Colossal Biosciences CEO and cofounder Ben Lamm said. “Our team took DNA from a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies.”
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Colossal Biosciences shared a video of two dire wolf cubs howling. The company claimed that the video marks the “first howl of a dire wolf in over 10,000 years.”
“The dire wolf has been extinct for over 10,000 years,” Colossal Biosciences tweeted. “These two wolves were brought back from extinction using genetic edits derived from a complete dire wolf genome, meticulously reconstructed by Colossal from ancient DNA found in fossils dating back 11,500 and 72,000 years.”
Colossal Biosciences added that Monday’s announcement of the “rebirth” of the dire wolf is not only a significant “milestone” for the company but is also a “leap forward for science, conservation, and humanity.”
Colossal Biosciences shared that the company’s goal is to “revolutionize history and be the first company to use CRISPR technology successfully in the de-extinction of previously lost species.”
