The world is constantly changing. The animal kingdom has its natural flow of which animals continue, which will evolve into better things, and which will dwindle off. But what if there was another option? What if there was a way to bring back what was thought to have dwindled out of existence? Something like an animal that was native to North America.
The dire wolf, Aenocyon dirus, was a species that went extinct over 10,000 years ago. Their extinction was thought to be because of their main prey no longer being available, as well as the possibility of climate change and competition playing into it. Their bones were first found back in the eighteen hundreds in Indiana here in the United States. After the initial findings, more began to be found, such as in the La Brea Tar Pits, California. Where full skeletons of extinct predators were uncovered.
The newly discovered bones gave hints to what the animal was like before its demise. It was found that their likely prey were bigger herbivores. Herbivores being their diet feeds into the idea that it was due to the lack of food that they ended up extinct. The fact there was likely high competition for that food source. Even between their own packs that were theorized to be up to thirty wolves in one, all added into the end of them.
Scientist had access to this information for years, learning more with each fossil they are able to bring to the surface. Information that included the fact dire wolves are not really wolves. But the biggest feat of them all was the ability to clone the previously extinct animals to bring them back into the world.
Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences is an organization of scientists with a common goal: bring back what has gone extinct. It is one of the more audacious goals for scientists to have, but they have top scientists on the case for many different species. The dire wolf became the group’s baby recently – quite literally too. As of April 2025, dire wolves have been cloned and brought back in the form of baby dire wolves: Remus. Romulus, and Khaleesi.
To bring back these hidden gems of creatures, scientists went through extensive work. When looking at the fossils that had been dug up, they found that there were only two sets of bones with DNA intact and usable. One was a single tooth which they drilled into. The other was a skull. Together, they extracted the DNA to try pulling out the genome sequences. For this process, scientists had to map and compare the DNA and genomes to those of closest relatives. In the case of the dire wolf, the gray wolf was the closest animal. They used the gray wolf’s genome sequences to create new lines for the dire wolf using the base of the gray wolf. The team was able to get blood drawn from the gray wolves to use for the process. With the blood, they would be able to tweak the genomes to what they believed would make a dire wolf all based on what scientists have been able to identify as dire wolf characteristics.
Genome engineers use technology to take out lines of genomes and replace them with what they believe to be the right code for dire wolves. The issue that the scientists had come across was that the process put stress on the cell. Gene editing tools are very invasive. To solve this, they make as make as many changes as they can at once: multigene editing. Once done, they have living cells of “dire wolf”. With those cells, they are able to replace the cells of a gray wolf’s embryos to make an embryo more dire wolf like. The embryo is then put into a surrogate gray wolf to grow this new animal.
Colossal, after taking all these steps, has come to have three healthy die wolf pups. Romulus and Remus were the first of the wolves made. They had been brought into this world Nov 2024. Together, they were able to grow up with the help of the Colossal team. They’re given an outdoor area to grow, teeth, and learn the ways of a pack with each other. Three months later, the first female of the dire wolves brought back was Khaleesi. Khaleesi, while behind the other two, is still going strong.
Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences has made their drive to continue de-extincting more animals. Specifically, the company has looked at the possibility of bringing back the woolly mammoth. How possible it is, is only theoretically now. “If they were able to bring back dire wolves, they can bring back anything” Dee Brooks, a senior, said. And it is truly what the mentality of the public, and even scientists, is. They will continue till they have another breakthrough like these wolves.