Sorry, Dire Wolf fans - It's still extinct despite what you have heard

Colossal Biosciences made headlines yesterday when it announced the resurrection of the dire wolf, a species of wolf that hasn't roamed Earth for more than 10,000 years.

The resurrection of the dire wolf species occurred on October 1, 2024, when three dire wolves were born into captivity. How was this scientific achievement made? Researchers at Colossal used ancient dire wolf DNA of the species and combined it with the genes of a grey wolf, which is the closest living ancestor of the dire wolf. The result is a hybrid of both species that has an extremely similar appearance and structure to its extinct ancestor. However, researchers are questioning the labeling of this new species and whether or not its accurate to say the dire wolf has been de-extincted.

The problems with these claims. Grey wolves and dire wolves were initially thought to be closely related due to their physical characteristics, but as New Scientist reports, a 2021 study of their ancient DNA found they last shared a common ancestor around 6 million years ago. In fact, animals like jackals, African wild dogs, and dholes are genetically closer to grey wolves than dire wolves are - even though dire wolves look more like grey wolves.

Due to the genetic split 6 million years ago, does that mean there are quite a lot of differences between grey wolves and dire wolves? Beth Shapiro spoke to New Scientist and was asked this question, but a bit more specifically, with the publication asking how many genetic differences there are between dire wolves and grey wolves. Shapiro was unable to tell New Scientist how many, but said her team has sequenced the complete genome of the dire wolf and will soon release it to the public.

Additionally, Shapiro said the two species share 99.5% of their DNA. While this does sound like quite a lot, the grey wolf genome is around 2.4 billion base pairs long, which means there are millions of base-pairs remaining that could influence a lot of genetic differences.

Moreover, Colossal says it has made 20 gene edits to resurrect the extinct dire wolf, with five of those gene edits being based on mutations to produce light coats in grey wolves. The remaining 15 gene edits are based on the dire wolf genome director and are aimed at changing the size of the animal, its musculature, and ear shape. Unfortunately, it's too early in their growth process to see if these gene edits worked.

So are they actually dire wolves?

It really comes down to how a species is classified. Is it determined by how it looks (morphological) or by its genetic make-up/history (phylogenetic)? Shapiro recognizes this and says Colossal is taking the morphological approach to classification, which boils down to - if it looks like a dire wolf, it's a dire wolf, regardless of its genetic make-up.

"Species concepts are human classification systems, and everybody can disagree and everyone can be right." You can use the phylogenetic [evolutionary relationships] species concept to determine what you're going to call a species, which is what you are implying... We are using the morphological species concept and saying, if they look like this animal, then they are the animal."