One month ago on April 7th, 2025, Colossal Biosciences released the shocking news of the birth of the dire wolves. Dire wolves went extinct over about 10,000-13,000 years ago due to a decline in their prey, but in 2021, Colossal Biosciences started working on a way to bring back the species. This is just the beginning, though; there has been news that their next species to bring back will be the gigantic Woolly Mammoth.
Resurrection biology, also known as de-extinction, is a type of science where scientists’ main focus is to bring extinct species back to life. There are multiple different ways scientists have been trying to achieve this. An article by EBSCO claims that for species to be brought back, scientists require a sufficient amount of preserved DNA to do so. Also, the article states,“They may also be able to repair damaged parts of an animal’s genetic code.” This process allows these scientists to clone and try to reproduce certain species.
Some may think that this process could turn into a live action Jurassic Park. Honestly, that was the first thing that came to my mind. For the people who don’t know, in the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movie franchise, the scientists extracted DNA from fossils, genetically modified dinosaurs, combined DNA from multiple dinosaurs to make one and mixed dinosaur DNA with other animals/species to produce another. These methods did work in the movies but had a bad turn in the end.
In the real world, de-extinction could cause harm to the animals we have now. Vox.com states that this could be more of an excuse for society to let animals go extinct since they know there would be a way to bring the animals back. There’s already a lot of endangered species that are not being fought for, and this would just cause more to be added to that list.
There is a good side to de-extinction though. Colossal Biosciences could prevent any future extinctions, improve ecosystems, and restore biodiversity. Their goal is to help any endangered species and improve technology. The wolves they brought back aren’t the same dire wolves that existed years ago. Three wolves were able to be produced by using old DNA, altering genes of the grey wolf and cloning. So the wolves aren’t exactly the same, but still have some similarities of the dire wolf like their long, white fluffy fur. These wolves won’t do any harm to any species and are kept safe in a sanctuary.
