Dire Wolf Brought Back: Scientists claim to have brought the dire wolf back to life. According to Dallas-based biotech company Colossal Biosciences, the world’s first successfully de-extinct animal is a wolf species that became extinct some 12,500 years ago.
The business revealed Monday that giant scientists have produced three dire wolf pups by altering the genes of a grey wolf, the closest living descendant of the prehistoric dire wolf, utilising ancient DNA, cloning, and gene-editing technologies. The end product is a hybrid species that resembles its extinct predecessor in appearance.
Since 2021, Colossal has been attempting to bring the mammoth, the dingo, and the Tasmanian tiger back to life; however, the corporation had not previously made its work on fire wolves public.
“This massive milestone is the first of many coming examples demonstrating that our end-to-end de-extinction technology stack works,” said Benefits Lamm, Colossal’s co-founder and CEO, in a news release. “Our team took DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000 -year -old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies.”
The three dire wolves reside on a 2,000-acre property that is surrounded by 10-foot (3-meter) high “zoo-grade” fencing. Security guards, drones, and live video feeds keep an eye on them.
Ancient DNA and fossilised dire wolves. Colossal’s researchers claimed to have assembled two high-quality Aenocyon dirus genomes, or full sets of genetic material, using ancient DNA taken from two dire wolf fossils.
To find the genetic variations for attributes unique to dire wolves, such as white coats and longer, thicker fur, the scientists compared the genomes with those of live canids, including wolves, jackals and foxes.
According to the news release, the company cloned the most promising cell lines and transferred them into donor eggs after using the genetic analysis data to modify grey wolf cells, making 20 changes in 14 genes.
“Healthy developing embryos were then transferred into surrogates for interspecies gestation,” with three pregnancies that led to births of the first de-extinct species, Colossal revealed in its statement.
According to Colossal Biosciences, a female dire wolf pup was born on January 30, 2025, and two male puppies were born on October 1, 2024.
According to Love Dalèn, an evolutionary genomics professor at Stockholm University’s Centre for Paleogenetics and Colossal adviser, the company effectively used CRISPR technology to create a hybrid genome to accomplish its goal.
“There’s no secret that across the genome, this is 99.9% gray wolf. There is going to be an argument in the scientific community regarding how many genes need to be changed to make a dire wolf, but this is a philosophical question,” Dalèn said.
“It carries dire wolf genes, and these genes make it look more like a dire wolf than anything we’ve seen in the last 13,000 years. And that is very cool.”
The work by the scientists was a “huge leap” from anything done in the area in the past, according to Dalèn, who claimed to have been “a little bit” involved in the research of the dire wolf genomes but not to have met the pups in person or participated in the general editing or cloning procedure.