7d ago

The Dire Wolf, an Extinct Prehistoric American Canine, Has Been Resurrected

The Dire Wolf, an Extinct Canine that Roamed Prehistoric America, Has Been Resurrected

While not the gigantic uber-canines of fantasy lore, these pups will become roughly-gray-wolf-sized dire wolves, and represent the first de-extincted animal species, raising a number of ethical questions about returning animals to ecosystems that may not be stable for long.

24 comments

I was thinking this was bs - like they just bred a big, wolf-like dog and called it a dire wolf. But no! They took genetic material from dire wolf remains and made dire wolf puppies! Wow. That's pretty wild.
Edit: nvm. Yeah they lyin'.
- You were right the first time - they're CRISPR-edited gray wolves engineered to exhibit the physical traits they found in dire wolf DNA.
  There's an 80-gene difference between dire wolves and gray wolves, and they've modified 14 of what they felt to be the most variant differences.
  It's still fascinating and tremendously difficult, and probably the best we can hope for in a very long time, but I don't feel Colossal are being totally honest in their presentation.
  
  Damn. You're right. Those journalists were sneaky slipping in this quote and not challenging/clarifying it:
  “We took a 13,000-year-old tooth, and a 74,000-year-old skull, and we made puppies,” Lamm told The Debrief.

The first species we Jurassic Parked are dire wolves?!
I swear humans are trying to speedrun their own demise.
- Yeah, maybe try the Dodo first or something else less dangerous than a giant wolf, right?
- There’s at least historical evidence of humans being able to re-extinct them if need be…
  
  Yeah if there’s one things Humans excel at it’s killing things.
  
  I have it on good authority that life… uh… finds a way
- Nah, it's cool. If they become a problem we just de-extinct dire gorillas to fight them. What could go wrong?
  
  Well they’ll probably team up and then we’ll have to build mecha-gorillas and mecha-dire-wolves to fight them. And we haven’t even talked about who’s going to direct.