The American company Colossal Biosciences claims that it has brought to life a wolf species that disappeared 10 thousand years ago.
Canis dirus/photo: x
“Activate the sound. Listen to the first howl of a Dirus canis after 10,000 years.transmits Colossal Bioscinences.
Another wolf chicken, named Khaleesi (name inspired by the series “Game of Thrones”), was born on January 31, 2025.
In the post on X, Colossal explained how the chicks were “brought back from the disappearance ” By genetic changes from a complete genome of Canis Dirus, which was “Reconstructed with meticulousness ” from the ancient DNA found in the fossils of a 13,000-year-old tooth from Ohio and an internal 72,000-year-old ear bone.
The gray wolves were also used to establish cell lines, because they are the closest relative of the missing species. The company has changed the gray wolf DNA to bring specific changes, such as a lighter color, hair length, body models, as well as body size and musculature.
Also, wolf-sargated wolves have been used to give birth to chicks, so they look and can sound like a canis dirus, but they are not a full genetic match.
However, these wolves will not learn to live in the wild, and Beth Shapiro, the director of the Colossal company, said that “He would love to know the natural behavior of a Dirus canis. “
“I cannot step in a chip without us not knowing“, This said, quoted by the New York Times.
Adam Boyko, a researcher at Cornell University, who was not involved in the project, said that “It is exciting that we can create functional versions of missing species. ” However, he said that these wolves are not really Canis Dirus, in the context in which they do not live in a pack to know their natural behavior.
The New Scientist, a British scientific magazine, was not very convinced of this achievement.
“No Dirus canis has been brought back to life. Given that the genome of the gray wolf has a length of approximately 2.4 billion pairs of bases, there is room for millions of bases of differences.”they wrote.
