De-extinction company announces that the dire wolf is back

On Monday, biotech company Colossal announced what it views as its first successful de-extinction: the dire wolf. These large predators were lost during the Late Pleistocene extinctions that eliminated many large land mammals from the Americas near the end of the most recent glaciation. Now, in a coordinated PR blitz, the company is claiming that clones of grey wolves with lightly edited genomes have essentially brought the dire wolf back. (Both Time and The New Yorker were given exclusive access to the animals ahead of the announcement.) The dire wolf is a relative of the now-common grey wolf, with clear differences apparent between the two species' skeletons. Based on the sequence of two new dire wolf genomes, the researchers at Colossal conclude that dire wolves formed a distinct branch within the canids over 2.5 million years ago. For context, that's over twice as long as brown and polar bears are estimated to have been distinct species. Dire wolves are also large, typically the s ... Read full article.