[Illusion]

Romulus and Remus are doing what puppies do: chasing, tussling, nipping, nuzzling. But there’s something very un-puppylike about the snowy white 6-month olds—their size, for starters. At their young age they already measure nearly 4 ft. long, tip the scales at 80 lb., and could grow to 6 ft. and 150 lb. Then there’s their behavior: the angelic exuberance puppies exhibit in the presence of humans—trotting up for hugs, belly rubs, kisses—is completely absent. They keep their distance, retreating if a person approaches. Even one of the handlers who raised them from birth can get only so close before Romulus and Remus flinch and retreat. This isn’t domestic canine behavior, this is wild lupine behavior: the pups are wolves. Not only that, they’re dire wolves—which means they have cause to be lonely.

The dire wolf once roamed an American range that extended as far south as Venezuela and as far north as Canada, but not a single one has been seen in over 10,000 years, when the species went extinct. Plenty of dire wolf remains have been discovered across the Americas, however, and that presented an opportunity for a company named Colossal Biosciences.

Relying on deft genetic engineering and ancient, preserved DNA, Colossal scientists deciphered the dire wolf genome, rewrote the genetic code of the common gray wolf to match it, and, using domestic dogs as surrogate mothers, brought Romulus, Remus, and their sister, 2-month-old Khaleesi, into the world during three separate births last fall and this winter—effectively for the first time de-extincting a line of beasts whose live gene pool long ago vanished. TIME met the males (Khaleesi was not present due to her young age) at a fenced field in a U.S. wildlife facility on March 24, on the condition that their location remain a secret to protect the animals from prying eyes.

The dire wolf isn’t the only animal that Colossal, which was founded in 2021 and currently employs 130 scientists, wants to bring back. Also on their de-extinction wish list is the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Already, in March, the company surprised the science community with the news that it had copied mammoth DNA to create a woolly mouse, a chimeric critter with the long, golden coat and the accelerated fat metabolism of the mammoth.

If all this seems to smack of a P.T. Barnum, the company has a reply. Colossal claims that the same techniques it uses to summon back species from the dead could prevent existing but endangered animals from slipping into extinction themselves. What they learn restoring the mammoth, they say, could help them engineer more robust elephants that can better survive the climatic ravages of a warming world. Bring back the thylacine and you might help preserve the related marsupial known as the quoll. Techniques learned restoring the dire wolf can similarly be used to support the endangered red wolf.

more: https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/

[kellyhound]

But while the young wolves - Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi - represent an impressive technological breakthrough, independent experts say they are not actually dire wolves.

Zoologist Philip Seddon from the University of Otago in New Zealand explained the animals are "genetically modified grey wolves".

Colossal publicised its efforts to use similar cutting edge genetic techniques to bring back extinct animals including the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger.

Meanwhile experts have pointed to important biological differences between the wolf on the cover of Time and the dire wolf that roamed and hunted during the last ice age.

Paleogeneticist Dr Nic Rawlence, also from Otago University, explained how ancient dire wolf DNA - extracted from fossilised remains - is too degraded and damaged to biologically copy or clone.

"Ancient DNA is like if you put fresh DNA in a 500 degree oven overnight," Dr Rawlence told BBC News. "It comes out fragmented - like shards and dust.

"You can reconstruct [it], but it's not good enough to do anything else with."

Instead, he added, the de-extinction team used new synthetic biology technology - using the ancient DNA to identify key segments of code that they could edit into the biological blueprint of a living animal, in this case a grey wolf.

"So what Colossal has produced is a grey wolf, but it has some dire wolf-like characteristics, like a larger skull and white fur," said Dr Rawlence. "It's a hybrid."

Dr Beth Shapiro, a biologist from Colossal Biosciences, said that this feat does represent de-extinction, which she described as recreating animals with the same characteristics.

"A grey wolf is the closest living relative of a dire wolf - they're genetically really similar - so we targeted DNA sequences that lead to dire wolf traits and then edited grey wolf cells... then we cloned those cells and created our dire wolves."

According to Dr Rawlence though, dire wolves diverged from grey wolves anywhere between 2.5 to six million years ago.

"It's in a completely different genus to grey wolves," he said. "Colossal compared the genomes of the dire wolf and the grey wolf, and from about 19,000 genes, they determined that 20 changes in 14 genes gave them a dire wolf."

The edited embryos were implanted in surrogate domestic dog mothers. According to the article in Time, all three wolves were born by planned caesarean section to minimise the risk of complications.

Colossal, which was valued at $10bn (£7.8bn) in January, is keeping the wolves on a private 2,000-acre facility at an undisclosed location in the northern US.

The pups certainly look like many people's vision of a dire wolf and the story has gathered global attention. So why is this scientific distinction important?

"Because extinction is still forever," Dr Rawlence told.

[Mr.NoCredit]

Really interesting read. Why humans feel the need to do this kind of thing is beyond me. Pretty soon they’ll start messing around with humans like this and we’ll become some kind of hybrids ourselves. Just what we need.

Jurassic Fools. Let’s make some megalodon sharks while we’re at it. That should be fun!

Fucking scientists.

[William May]

Dire wolves had "saber-tooth" like fangs. These don't appear to have them, unless they just haven't developed yet. You can see their skeletons in the museum at the La Brea tar pits in L.A. These don't look anything like those, structurally.

Also, I would prefer they recreate Farrah Fawcett instead. I don't want to "wag my schnitzel" at THESE mofos, for one thing, just because of the physical hazards involved.

But having a Farrah Fawcett clone in your backyard tea garden, lounging around, needing to have cocoa butter applied several times a day, and playing with the kittens, would be a BIG DRAW! On top of that, Farrah would probably need spankings several times a day, being as wiggly as she is. Plus, you could teach her how buttons work, too! She would be fascinated, because it's almost like "fashion magic". So THAT would make a far BETTER cloning experiment than what these doofusses just did!

Am I right? or am I right?

[kellyhound]

Originally Posted by William May ↗

Dire wolves had "saber-tooth" like fangs. These don't appear to have them, unless they just haven't developed yet.

You can see their skeletons in the museum at the La Brea tar pits in L.A. These don't look anything like those, structurally.

https://tarpits.org/stories/dire-wol...wall-reinstall

[William May]

Originally Posted by kellyhound ↗

https://tarpits.org/stories/dire-wol...wall-reinstall

That's IT! Too bad they did not show any of the assembled skeletons. They come up between your hips and your chest area, and they are about 8 feet long. These are BIG MFers! It was spooky just standing next to them at the museum.


It's an awesome museum. ALSO, they have the first known murder victim as well, some woman that was killed by a blow to the head, and thrown into the tarpits. (Cave Man Divorce, maybe?)

[Illusion]

So, basically, this is just a GMO grey wolf, a designer animal that has been gene edited to have “dire wolf” characteristics. Thanks for the clarification, kellyhound.

[Illusion]

I hope they bring back the sabretooth tiger next.

[kellyhound]

[ajs11961]

What could go wrong? They get out and multiply and kill other species of a myriad of animals and the balance of nature has been altered. Sorta like the Lyme, CT tick experiment that got out and look what's happened with that debacle.