Real-Life Direwolves? Not Quite. But Science Just Got Dangerously Close.
- Rich Washburn
- Apr 7
- 4 min read
“Life, uh... finds a way.”
Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park
Yeah, well, apparently so do biotech startups with millions in funding, a subscription to CRISPR Weekly, and a borderline obsession with ancient predators.
Unless you’ve been living north of the Wall—or, you know, just off social media—you may have missed the scientific mic drop that hit the internet like a resurgent Ice Age saber-tooth: a company claims to have brought the extinct direwolf back to life.
You heard that right. Direwolves. The same legendary beasts that once roamed prehistoric North America... and later, the CGI’d forests of Westeros alongside Jon Snow.
Let’s unpack this story before you start digging out Valyrian steel.
So... Did They Actually Clone a Direwolf?
Short answer? Not exactly...Long answer? It's complicated. But let’s geek out together.
The buzz began with a TIME Magazine article announcing that a company called Colossal had engineered a creature named Remis, which they dubbed “the first direwolf in 10,000 years.” Predictably, the headlines screamed "Resurrected Direwolf!" while science Twitter and Reddit skeptics collectively rolled their eyes so hard it altered the Earth's magnetic field.
So here’s what actually went down:
Colossal sequenced the genome of the extinct direwolf using ancient DNA recovered from fossilized remains (many from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles).
They then edited the DNA of a modern grey wolf, tweaking 14 key genes to match what they believe were core traits of the direwolf.
Using cloned embryos implanted into domestic dog surrogates, they created three pups: Romulus, Remis, and Kahleesi.
Romulus and Remis are, essentially, grey wolves whose genetic traits have been CRISPR’d to look, act, and possibly howl like direwolves.
So, it’s not cloning in the Dolly-the-sheep sense. No ancient direwolf DNA was directly spliced into a living embryo. Instead, they reverse-engineered the expression of certain traits. That makes these animals genetically engineered facsimiles, not authentic 10,000-year-old beasts.
But damn if they don’t look the part.
Jurassic Park, Game of Thrones, and the God Complex
Is this Jurassic Park come to life?
Not quite. In Spielberg’s universe, they extracted intact dinosaur DNA from fossilized mosquitoes and filled in the gaps with frog DNA. That was wildly speculative and just a touch catastrophic. Here, we're not even working with viable ancient cells. We're guessing at phenotype from broken-up genomes and recreating traits via modern proxies.
It’s less “resurrection” and more “approximation.”
The moral of the story? This isn’t a true de-extinction. It’s genetic cosplay.
That said, the technology is a big deal. What Colossal has accomplished is synthetic evolutionary mimicry. And that opens some incredible (and terrifying) doors. We’re talking about:
Potentially restoring extinct ecosystem functions
Rebalancing fragile environments
And yeah, eventually building your very own prehistoric zoo — Jurrass-ish Park, if you will.
So What Is a Direwolf, Anyway?
Real-world direwolves (Canis dirus) weren’t just fantasy fare. These apex predators lived across the Americas until around 10,000 years ago. Bigger, bulkier, and with a stronger bite than modern grey wolves, they likely feasted on megafauna like bison, sloths, and mastodons.
And when those food sources disappeared (courtesy of an Ice Age extinction event), so did they.
But thanks to an abundance of remains—especially from La Brea—we know quite a bit about them. Enough, apparently, to piece together a partial genome and give it a second act.
The Science Behind the Scary Cool
Cloning is no longer science fiction. Since Dolly’s debut in 1996, we've cloned pigs, cats, horses, wolves, and more than 1,500 dogs. But Colossal is pushing the envelope by:
Editing living grey wolf cells to express direwolf-like genes
Growing embryos from those modified cells
Birthing them via large domestic dog surrogates
That’s not Jurassic cloning. It’s evolutionary cosplay meets designer biology. And the implications are enormous.
And direwolves aren’t the endgame. Colossal is also eyeing:
The Tasmanian tiger
The woolly mammoth
And yes, the dodo bird (because humanity hasn’t learned a damn thing about killing off what it finds delicious)
According to Colossal, a baby woolly mammoth might stomp onto the scene by 2028. And when it does, we’ll be forced to wrestle with some seriously uncomfortable questions.
Ethical Wild Cards: Cool, Creepy, or Calamitous?
Let’s not pretend this is all puppies and prehistoric nostalgia.
We’re editing genomes to recreate creatures that evolution (and possibly karma) wiped off the Earth for a reason. These engineered animals will never live wild, and they may experience health issues or developmental quirks that we can't yet predict. Worse, they could disrupt ecosystems in ways we haven’t even modeled.
And for what? Science? Spectacle? Investors?
You’ve gotta ask: Are we playing God, or just building a better zoo?
There's a fine line between "scientific marvel" and "bioethical minefield." And right now, we’re squarely tap dancing on it.
Here’s my take: This isn’t the resurrection of a species. It’s a milestone in genetic simulation, and that’s still absolutely incredible.
We’re watching science fiction become biotech reality. What Colossal did isn’t creating direwolves—it’s creating creatures that look like direwolves, using the DNA of living animals and the blueprints of extinct ones.
That’s not magic. That’s Moore’s Law with fur.
It may not be true de-extinction, but it’s one heck of a first step. And you better believe I’ll be first in line to photograph one of these creatures—preferably from the safety of a zoom lens.
💬 Your turn: Is this a marketing stunt or a true scientific leap? Would you visit a park full of resurrected animals? Or are we inching a little too close to chaos theory?
And hey, if we’re gonna bring back the Ice Age, can we at least get some mammoth jerky out of it?
Comments