Reacción a "Colossal Biosciences presents what it calls ‘dire wolves’, extinct for thousands of years"

Dire Wolf De-extinction is not what it seems. Colossal Biosciences, the U$10B company behind efforts to resurrect the woolly mammoth, the Thylacine, and the dodo, have just announced what they describe as de-extinction of the dire wolf, a species that went extinct some 10,000 years ago. They are claiming this as the world's first de-extinction, but while no doubt it has required some amazing technological breakthroughs, the cute pups Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi are not dire wolfs - they are genetically modified grey wolves.

Wolves and dire wolves, despite the wolf part of their names, are not closely related, having parted ways from a common ancestor some 6 million years ago, and the African jackal might be more closely related to dire wolves. Dire wolves are in their own genus, so a very different species. What Colossal has done is to introduce a small number of changes to the genetic material of a grey wolf to produce grey wolf pups with dire wolf features such as pale coats and potentially slightly larger size. So, hybrid grey wolves, or a GMO wolf. The pups will spend their days in a large enclosure being hand fed and closely monitored.

Certainly, this involves advances in genetic technology, and these might have applications for the conservation of existing species - but the return of dire wolves? No. In the same way that Colossal's plans for woolly mammoths and dodos will involve the genetic modification of related species. We have GMO wolves and might one day have GMO Asian elephants, but for now extinction really is forever.