Posted on 04/07/2025 10:34:20 AM PDT by Pollard
For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series “Game of Thrones.”
In 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve DNA from the fossils of dire wolves, which went extinct about 13,000 years ago. With the discovery of additional DNA, the Colossal researchers have now edited 20 genes of gray wolves to imbue the animals with key features of dire wolves. They then created embryos from the edited gray-wolf cells, implanted them in surrogate dog mothers and waited for them to give birth.
The result is three healthy wolves — two males that are 6 months old and one female that is 2 months old, named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi — that have some traits of dire wolves.
They are big, for one thing, and have dense, pale coats not found in gray wolves. Colossal, which was valued at $10 billion in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yet the irony was delicious.
Who better to know?
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plenty of other ungulates to go around.
They’re friggin awesome but the undercoat would set off my allergies
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A sabre tooth tiger would be cool on jogging trails....for hunters.
Crazy happy about this
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Of course! I always get my historical facts from television fantasy shows. 😁
Point is Dire Wolves were only here, therefore. …
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Yes, I got that.
Right? The expert! 😄
Totally.
😜
They still have habits unlike Mammoths and Giant Sloths (which would be awesome to see alive again).
You know, it seems like only yesterday when there was like (zero chance) the wild turkeys and deer wondering around my back pasture could’ve been eaten by a Dire Wolf.
Probably make a good winter coat.
“...no inhibitions or fear of humans at all?”
A couple of us with 12 gauge pumps would shortly re-educate them.
They are extinct for a reason. :->
Yep, repopulate recently killed off species, especially when the kill off was detrimental to the local ecology. Maybe bring back some other things just for a really cool zoo. The CEO and co-founder was on Rogan a couple of days ago and I watched it last night. He said the Woolly Mammoth they plan to bring back is the same size as the Asian elephant, not the Woolly Mammoth that was 3 times the size of any existing elephant.
Quite a roll out really. CEO/Co-founder on Rogan and the next day to break the Dire Wolf story, open youtube channel and post on several social media platforms, a dozen news articles come out that same day and the story goes viral across every online info medium. Their media marketing person is really good.
The Dodo, and the Thylacine are on their to do list. I could see people having pet Dodo birds but they need protection from predators because they don't fear anything, even things they should.
Dodo bird egg for breakfast and zoom meeting while your self driving car takes you to work. Flinstones/Jetsons combo. I still want my flying car though.
ROFL, I swear to you, I almost wrote those exact words in that post!! GMTA.
Not sure I understand where the profit is in this genetic renewal project. I would think some sort of grazing animal might be a more financially exploitable choice.
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