An American startup company, Colossal Biosciences, claims to have revived a long extinct species of animal, the Dire Wolves, after creating new de-extinction tech. But don’t be fooled, whilst this achievement is absolutely still incredible it’s not exactly a ‘revival’ of a long extinct species.
An associate professor at the University of Otago, Nic Rawlence, actually put it best “To truly de-extinct something, you would have to clone it. The problem is we can’t clone extinct animals because the DNA is not well enough preserved.”. How the wolves were actually created was from examining DNA fossilised teeth and skull fragments, taking blood cells from living grey-wolves, genetically modifying the blood, transferring that genetic material to an egg cell from a domestic dog. THEN when the embryos were ready, were given to surrogate dogs and then 2 months later, BAM, Jon Snow puppies. Rawlence likened the wolf pups to grey wolf hybrids, as opposed to dire wolves.Regardless, the pups are now famous, even already getting their own Times Magazine cover.
Look at that good boy!
But does this technology lead us down a path we’ve been warned about? I don’t want to be that guy that goes straight into conspiracy theory territory but this sounds exactly like how those Jurassic Park movies got started and none of them ended well. It’s just feeling a bit too “life… finds a way” territory for my liking.
