The wonder and controversy of bringing back the dire wolf from extinction | Colossal Biosciences interview

As soon as Colossal Biosciences declared that it brought the dire wolf back from extinction, everyone felt a sense of wonder. George R.R. Martin himself, who popularized the dire wolf as Jon Snow’s Ghost in A Song of Ice and Fire, posed for a picture with the pups to be part of a historic scientific achievement. He wept at the sight of the snowy fur of the white wolves. To me, along with Colossal Biosciences’ other work of making mice with the hair of wooly mammoths, the work was a reminder of what science can achieve when it’s supported with an amazing amount of talent and capital — Colossal Biosciences has raised $435 million at a valuation of $10.2 billion. It is the stuff of science fiction, as Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park based on the notion that genetic material could be recovered for dinosaurs and they could be brought back to life. Colossal’s chief aim is to bring back the wooly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine. The computing power and the genetic tools finally exi ... Read full article.