No Longer Extinct: Dire Wolves Howl Again After 12,000 Years

Scientists have revived the dire wolf, a species that went extinct nearly 12,500 years ago, through genetic engineering. The two pups that have taken the scientific world by storm are named Romulus and Remus. They are just six months old, but they already measure nearly four feet and weigh over 36 kg. The company behind their resurrection, Texas-based Colossal Biosciences, said it created the dire wolf pups by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene editing, as per a report in CNN. The dire wolf was made popular by the HBO series 'Game of Thrones'.

The scientists used the DNA of its closest living relative, the gray wolf. The dire wolf was a top predator that once roamed North America. They are larger in size than the gray wolves and have a slightly thicker fur and stronger jaw.

"The idea that we could just take a vial of blood, isolate EPCs, culture them, and clone from them, and they have a pretty high cloning efficiency, we think it's a game changer," George Church, Colossal co-founder, and professor of genetics at both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Time Magazine.

Billionaire Elon Musk reacted to the news, posting his own Wishlist. "Please make a miniature pet wooly mammoth," Musk posted on X while resharing his post.

After their birth, the pups were fed from a surrogate for a few days, after which the Colossal team started feeding them from the bottle. They are now living as healthy young dire wolves, said the company.

However, the pups' behaviour is different from other existing wolf species. As per Time, the exuberance that puppies exhibit in the presence of humans is completely absent. Romulus and Remus keep their distance and retreat as a person approaches. Even one of the handlers, who has raised them from birth, can get only so close before the pups flinch.

The behaviour is said to be typical of dire wolves - they want to be lonely.

This is just one of the species that Colossal plans to resurrect. Others are the mammoth, dodo and Tasmanian tiger, though they have achieved limited success in other projects. But the scientists are hopeful.

"This massive milestone is the first of many coming examples demonstrating that our end-to-end de-extinction technology stack works," said Ben Lamm, Colossal's co-founder and CEO, in a press statement. "Our team took DNA from a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies."

The dire wolves are living on a 2,000-acre site at an undisclosed location enclosed by 10-foot-tall fencing, where they are monitored by security personnel, drones and live camera feeds.

They resurrected three pups in total - two males born on October 1, 2024, and a female born on January 30, 2025.