Answer by Joseph Hubbard
This question relates to a report in Time Magazine, published on the 7th April 2025, reporting on an announcement by a company called ‘Colossal Biosciences’, claiming that they have genetically reanimated the dire wolf, leading to the announcement that two pups, named Romulus and Remus, “Are Dire Wolves”. This is not a fully unexpected announcement; this is the same company that just a few weeks prior announced that they had genetically created ‘woolly mice’, one step towards reanimating the woolly mammoth. The company also claims to be working on bringing back both the dodo, and the Tasmanian tiger. The statement from the company, on their US-based website, is as follows: “On October 1, 2024, for the first time in human history, Colossal successfully restored a once-eradicated species through the science of de-extinction. After a 10,000+ year absence, our team is proud to return the dire wolf to its rightful place in the ecosystem.”
The short answer to the question, is no – they have not recreated dire wolves, and to claim to have done so is a disingenuous twisting of biological terms at best, and an outright lie to aid marketing at worst. In a nutshell, what they have done is genetically modify grey wolves to have dire wolf-like traits – but what does this actually mean, what are the chances of reanimating extinct species, and what is a creation perspective on all this?
It’s worth noting that the announcement of this scientific discovery was published in a culture news magazine, and then subsequently in a social media post by Colossal Biosciences, not a refereed journal or publication. This means analysing what has been done is tricky, plus there is very little chance to properly evaluate what their claims are, as there has been no due process as would normally happen with a scientific discovery. In other words, Colossal Biosciences have deliberately avoided any peer review, technique criticism, or ability to confirm their claims. This is unsurprising in one sense – they are a for-profit company, and don’t want to share their secrets, but it does mean that perhaps this ‘scientific’ discovery is not quite as scientific as they claim. If a paper does eventually come out, detailing the techniques, procedure, and genetics, then we would have a much better understanding of what they have created, but for now, we only have their own social media posts, and the Time Magazine article to go from. So, what is being claimed?
In the words of the company’s CEO, 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. It was once said, ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Today, our team gets to unveil some of the magic they are working on.” From this statement, it would sound like they have done what has been talked about for ages with woolly mammoths, inserting mammoth DNA into an elephant embryo, and gestating it in a surrogate mother. However, look a bit closer, and that’s not quite the case with these ‘dire wolves’.
We do know, that these wolves are the result of CRISPR gene editing, in other words, artificially doctoring specific genes to make them match other gene types. This is a well-known and well-established technique, and has also led to some medical procedures, including what has become known as ‘gene-therapy’. So, rather than extract dire wolf DNA, and create a new one, Colossal Biosciences simply read a DNA sequence from a dire wolf, one that was likely very fragmentary, extracted from teeth and skull bones, and then identified a number of specific genome differences from the grey wolf. They then selected 20 of these differences, and began to doctor the grey wolf genome, in order to ‘add in’ these gene differences. The embryos were then cultured in an artificial environment, before being implanted into domestic dogs, acting as a surrogate. The result were three pups, who were bigger, apparently physically stronger, and with white coats.
When it comes to the claim that these ARE dire wolves, there needs to be a bit of understanding regarding genetics. Colossal claims to have sequenced the entire dire wolf genome and have stated that it is 99.5 percent identical to the grey wolf genome. As of yet, they have not released the data from this genome, and seem to have no plans to do so, meaning that as of this moment, there is no way of verifying this statement. We’ve also heard similar statistics like this before, such as the claim of 98% similarity between apes and humans. As with all these similarity claims, the ultimate logic of statistics reveals a greater truth. The grey wolf has a genome that is around 2.4 billion base pairs long, meaning that in that 0.5 percent difference, there is up to 12 million base pair differences between true dire wolves and the grey wolf. And yet Colossal is claiming to have created dire wolves based on just 20 base pair adjustments. Some of the maths is not lining up here. In fact, five of the changes made are known mutations in grey wolves, which produce lighter coats in wild populations. So only 15 are true changes, and they all have to do with the animal’s size, musculature, and ear shape, none of which really have much to do with being a dire wolf genetically. In fact, in an interview, Colossal’s chief scientist admitted that it would be at least another year until we see whether the genetic changes even have the intended effects – in other words, these minor genetic changes still may have made no difference!
Colossal gets around these issues by making the following statement: “Species concepts are human classification systems, and everybody can disagree, and everyone can be right. You can use the phylogenetic 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.”
In essence, they are correct. The term ‘species’ has no agreed-upon definition, and it is not even a Biblical term. God created according to kind – the old Latin word was genus, and we have this written into our modern classification system, thanks to creationist inventor Carl Linnaeus. Species was designed to classify a special type of creature within this created kind (genus), while recognising that they were all still part of that original created kind. Using this logic, there can be no doubt that foxes, wolves, dogs, and yes, even dire wolves, are all descended from the original created ‘dog’ kind. How we then define different types within the kind is then up to us, and Colossal are making the claim that rather than classifying according to evolutionary descent (which I agree with), you can classify species according to morphology – how they look.There is still the genetic problem, of the vast difference between actual dire wolves (if the quoted statistics are accurate), and these ‘hybrid pups’. Couple that with the fact that not a single piece of dire wolf DNA was used in their creation, simply edited grey wolf genes, and the fact that we still don’t know if the genetic modification will even result in an animal that looks like a dire wolf, and the claim that ‘Dire Wolves are back’ begins to look a bit sketchy. Also consider that we don’t actually know what a dire wolf fully looks like – they have been extinct for a while, and we only have their bones to go off, along with a few specimens buried in permafrost. As part of the discussion on a number of scientific threads that I am part of, one thing I picked up was how many people were commenting that these pups looked nothing like what we find in the permafrost, but rather like how dire wolves are depicted in Hollywood fantasy series. It does make you wonder if this is more a movie-inspired publicity stunt, than an actual scientific discovery. Whatever the case, these creatures certainly aren’t dire wolves and are simply some genetically mutated grey wolves. To claim that these creatures are the same species as the dire wolf is incorrect – they are simply not. One could argue that they are a new species, something distinct from both dire wolves and grey wolves, but again there is a problem with this. These hybrid species would never have originated in the wild, with the dire wolf being extinct, and the grey wolf being the diversified descendant of the original dog/wolf kind. Indeed, even if the two species were alive at the same time and were able to interbreed (a small genetic possibility, much like lion/tiger and zebra/donkey hybrids), they still wouldn’t be the same as these creatures, as they do not have an even 50/50 genetic split from the two parents, as would be the case with a true hybrid. And, furthermore, a natural hybrid would not have been genetically modified to the point of gene editing, as these creatures are. Even domestic dogs, like the pug, as genetically deformed as they are, are still not the product of gene editing, but simply artificial selection. Again, leading us to the conclusion that these new ‘dire wolves’ are not only not dire wolves, they are not even a new species, but simply modified grey wolves. So, what can be learned from this announcement, and what are the chances of actually bringing back extinct animals, such as dire wolves, mammoths, etc?
A few things to take away from the research itself include the fact that this original dire wolf DNA shouldn’t exist in any form, degraded or otherwise. DNA is inherently fragile, and the chances of it surviving for supposed 13,000 years is unlikely, and 72,000 years is virtually impossible. Whether or not it is ever properly shown that the entire genome has been sequenced, just the presence of readable DNA tells you that these bones are younger than believed. Even under optimal burial conditions, DNA decomposition happens far quicker than these long ages allow, and not just for dire wolves, but also for mammoths and other fossil creatures, including the dinosaurs. Another takeaway point is the incredible fragility and complexity of this research. It took a $10 billion company and over 150 researchers years of work to produce a genetically modified grey wolf. Even without recreating a dire wolf, this work stands as testament to the incredible design and engineering that is seen in DNA. If it took this level of intelligence to just modify the genome, how much more intelligence was required to invent it in the first place! All DNA bears the hallmark of design and shouts out the reality that it was created. It really is true that, as the Bible says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and he created all living things according to their kind and commanded them to reproduce after their kind. All creatures show these two facts, including both the dire wolf, and the grey wolf. But aside from that, are we ever actually going to see any extinct creatures come back to life?
The biggest problem with bringing back animals from extinction, is that, for the most part, you are attempting to reanimate genetically healthier animals than we have today. The real history of the world is good to bad to worse, and ever since Adam sinned, the world has been going downhill, genes included. Any attempt to recreate extinct animals will have to contend with the fact that you’re trying to put healthier genetic material into degenerated hardware, and while you may end up with a creature, it won’t be exactly the same as the original. Many of these creatures would have been the result of rapid diversification after the global flood, with a stronger and closer-to-creation genome to work with and diversified for a specific environment – one that likely does not exist today. Mammoths, for instance, lived not on frozen permafrost where they are now found, but widespread cool grasslands, the likes of which are not found today. The modern-day elephant is some 3000 years down the line from mammoths – that’s 3000 years worth of unhealthy mutations built up, degradation of genetic material, and continued diversification. In fact, I’m willing to make a prediction. We are likely to see more claims of these ‘reanimated’ ‘de-extinction’ creatures in the future. However, they will all either be simply partially modified modern creatures (like these ‘dire wolves’) or will ultimately prove to be vastly unhealthier than either the original creature, or the modern equivalent, and will live only a brief and short life. Modern creatures are simply no match for the original created kind that they are descended from, and the closer back to creation you go, the more superior these creatures become, and the harder they will be to even copy by genetic modification today.
There is also an ethical question in all of this as well – where is the boundary between exercising our God-given dominion over the earth, and playing god with His creation? Should we really be playing around with gene editing and modification? Should we really be attempting to create completely new creatures, rather than just artificially selecting from the created genome? Does a fish gene really belong in a corn plant? It’s a big question that many Christians debate over today, but two things are for certain. God created according to kind, so the laws of nature will always reflect this. Maybe a fish gene does have an apparent benefit in a corn plant – but it will still be corn, will still produce corn, and – left to its own devices – will revert once again back into a natural corn plant through pollination with other corn plants. Indeed, we will never see Hollywood-style mutations of half-one-kind-half-another-kind, as this contradicts the very way that God created. All ‘successful’ genetic modifications attempting to create a new type of creature have always been conducted within a single created kind, and these wolves are no exception.
Another thing is also certain – God was, is, and will always be, the Creator King over all the Earth. He has judged in the past, will judge in the future, and continues to judge and exercise His sovereign control today. All activities by every human being – scientists included, will be held up against His Truth and judged by the perfect God, either in this lifetime, or at the final judgement. So a word of warning to every scientist out there – be sure that your work is being done for the Glory of your Creator, and think carefully about whether He is pleased with what you are – or are not – doing.
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