Game Of Bones! 'Dire Wolves' Recreated By Genetics Firm

Game Of Bones! 'Dire Wolves' Recreated By Genetics Firm. ’De-extinction’ company Colossal Biosciences have announced the healthy births of their latest effort to bring prehistoric animals back from beyond the grave - ‘dire wolves’. The dire wolf was made famous by the hit HBO series Game of Thrones, as companions of the Stark family, but it was in fact an American canid that had previously been extinct for over 12,500 years. The successful birth of three ‘dire wolves’ is the latest attempt by Colossal to ‘de-extinct’ animals - a project that to date has resulted in mice with wooly mammoth genes. “This massive milestone is the first of many coming examples demonstrating that our end-to-end de-extinction technology stack works,” says CEO of Colossal Ben Lamm. “Our team took DNA from a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies.” Additionally, Colossal has birthed two litters of cloned red wolves, the most critically endangered wolf in the world, using a new approach to non-invasive blood cloning. The three litters of Colossal’s dire wolves include two adolescent males (Romulus and Remus) and one female puppy (Khaleesi). Sceptics, however, state that the grey wolf's genome is so similar to its dire wolf ancestor that it is difficult to say whether these are genuinely an example of de-extinction or simply an example of genetically altering modern wolves to look like their legendary ancestor. Analyses of the high quality dire wolf genome revealed that the grey wolf is the closest living relative of dire wolves – with dire wolves and grey wolves sharing 99.5% of their DNA code. Whatever their genetic specificity, the wolves are now thriving on a 2,000+ acre secure expansive ecological preserve.