One of the resurrected dire wolves | Colossal Bioscience
In a bold announcement made back in April of last year, a company by the name of Colossal Bioscience announced they had miraculously “brought back” an extinct species of wolf that hadn’t walked the Earth in about 10,000 years. And while on the surface, the announcement, which detailed how scientists resurrected these canines, was meant to be Earth shattering, many, including us, began to ask the question: "Did We Actually De-Extinct the Dire Wolf, or Just Create a Slightly Different Gray Wolf?"
A closer look at the process, which, yes, did involve the inclusion of fragmented ancient DNA extracted from fossils (a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull), also included CRISPR gene editing on modern gray wolf embryos.
So, did we truly bring back the Dire Wolf? Well, kind of.
Nonetheless, Colossal’s CEO Ben Lamm owned it stating that, if nothing else, these petri dish wolves captured the “essence” of the species rather than a perfect genetic replication. Either way you slice it, these hybrids were designed using about 20 targeted edits across 14 genes to instill traits like larger size, shaggier coats, and robust facial structures, so if nothing else, they’re pretty cool to look at.
With the three pups having been held in a secure and undisclosed location here in the US, there wasn’t much to be said about Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi until earlier this week when Colossal announced the trio’s progress.
According to a report published on Tuesday showcasing Colossal’s new high-tech Dallas headquarters, previously unseen footage shows the wolves, who are approaching full maturity, living and hunting together as a pack.
An animatronic dire wolf greets visitors at Colossal’s HQ
Over the past year, the trio has shown remarkable progress in a secure 2,000-acre preserve (location undisclosed for security reasons). By mid-2025, the males, Romulus and Remus, had doubled in size, weighing over 90 pounds at just six months (approximately 20% larger than typical gray wolf pups of the same age) demonstrating the success of the genetic modifications for enhanced growth and build.
The female wolf, Khaleesi, was integrated into the group full-time last fall, and has since helped form a nascent pack dynamic. According to Colossal, Remus emerged as the alpha with assertive leadership, Romulus as a supportive beta, with the group now hunting deer carcasses together, exhibiting wild lupine behaviors such as wariness toward humans and no signs of domestic affection. Annual health examinations confirm they are thriving, with no genetic anomalies detected, and the company plans to expand the program by producing more pups this year.
The pups at about 2 weeks old | Colossal Bioscience
This tech is also reportedly being applied to conservation efforts, such as cloning "ghost" red wolves using ancestral DNA to bolster the already critically endangered population.
However, skeptics maintain these are still approximations and are rightfully raising concerns about potential ecological disruptions if released, including impacts on modern ecosystems or unintended hybridization.
As Colossal opens its new Dallas headquarters and establishes a global biovault for endangered species DNA (Jurassic Park, anyone?), this dire wolf project serves as a proof-of-concept for other ambitious company goals like reviving woolly mammoths and dodos.
This project, which is most certainly blurring the lines between restoration and creation, begs the question as to whether we are witnessing the dawn of a new era in biodiversity, or simply engineering novel species under the guise of revival.
For now, Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi embody both scientific triumph and philosophical quandary, pushing the boundaries of what it means to "bring back" the past, leaving some of us questioning whether or not we should.
