Rufus Self

Could Jurassic Park become a reality?

Colossal Biosciences recently announced that they’ve brought an extinct species back to life. The animal in question is the dire wolf – recently famous from Game of Thrones. According to the company, three pups named Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi mark the first successful de-extinction of a mammal.

It’s the kind of claim that grabs headlines, but it’s also not true.

I spoke with leading experts, Dr. Kayce Bell, Curator of Mammalogy at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, and Dr. Nick Rawlins, Director of the Otago Paleogenics Lab., University of Otago, New Zealand.

They were both clear: this is not a de-extinction. Not even close.

Picture credit: Colossal Biosciences, 2025

What Is a Dire Wolf Anyway?
Dire wolves evolved in North America about 250,000 years ago and went extinct 13,000 years ago. Bigger than modern grey wolves, they hunted Ice Age giants like mammoths and bison. But they weren’t just oversized wolves. “They’re equally related to jackals, coyotes, and wolves,” Dr. Bell told me. “They look similar due to convergent evolution, but genetically, they’re distinct.”

So, what have colossal actually done?
Colossal sequenced the dire wolf genome from fossil samples and compared it to that of modern grey wolves. They then used CRISPR gene-editing tools (think molecular scissors) to tweak 14 genes across 20 sites in a grey wolf embryo, said Dr.Rawlins – That’s 20 changes out of roughly 12.5 million differences between the species.
Some of the traits they targeted included body size, coat colour, and muzzle shape, even though as Dr. Bell pointed out, we don’t actually know what colour dire wolves were.
So is there even any dire wolf DNA in these pups?
“no”, said Dr. Bell, “they used the information that they got from the direwolf genome, but they just modified gray wolf genes.

So should we be calling them Dire wolves?

“no – they’re designer grey wolfs with a few dire wolf like characteristics”

Dr. Rawlins

Why does it matter what we call them?
Pretending that this is “de-extinction” undermines conservation efforts. If people think we can just bring animals back with tech, the incentive to protect what we still have disappears.

“Who cares if the white rhino goes extinct when we can just bring it back?” Dr. Bell said. “But we can’t. We’re not bringing anything back. We’re creating something else entirely.”
Worse, Colossal’s claim has been picked up by politicians who are already hostile to conservation. “A week after the story broke, Trump-aligned figures were talking about removing animals from the endangered species list,” Dr. Rawlins told me. “Their argument was: why protect them if we can just de-extinct them later?”

But of course, we can’t. Extinction, unfortunately, is forever.

Catch up with the full story on Politics in motion.