Bradley Shaffer for Gizmodo—Has the Dire Wolf Truly Been Resurrected? We Asked the Experts

Has the dire wolf truly been resurrected? UCLA professor and evolutionary biologist Bradley Shaffer discussed the recent scientific breakthrough for Gizmodo.

The company Colossal Biosciences claims it has achieved the world’s first “functional de-extinction,” using ancient DNA to edit gray wolf cells and create three pups with traits of the long-extinct species. But experts — including Shaffer — aren’t howling just yet.

“Is it the dire wolf? Probably not,” said Shaffer, director of the La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science at UCLA. “Does it have some of their features? Yeah. And my guess is that’s as much as they hoped to accomplish — and they’ve probably accomplished their goals.”

While Colossal’s animals may look the part, with pale coats and imposing builds, they share only 20 gene edits with the real species. That’s a tiny fraction of the millions of differences separating dire wolves from their modern relatives. Still, Shaffer called the work ‘a big accomplishment’ in gene editing — one that may have far-reaching repercussions for the future of conservation and even human biomedical research.