From Cryptozoology to Reality: But Is It Really a Dire Wolf?

For decades, stories of giant, prehistoric-looking wolves still roaming the wilderness have circulated. From North America to parts of Europe, witnesses have described creatures too large to be ordinary wolves—often placing them in the same category as Bigfoot, the Yeti, or even the so-called Wolfman. Some believe these could be populations of the long-extinct dire wolf, somehow surviving undetected. Sightings of massive canids—particularly in Appalachia and the American Southwest—continue to surface, described as unnaturally large wolves with unusual colouring or glowing eyes. While mainstream science has dismissed those claims as folklore, a biotech company in the U.S. now says it’s done something remarkable: it has brought the dire wolf back. Sort of.

On the surface, it sounds like the stuff of science fiction creeping ever closer to reality. A company called Colossal Biosciences has announced the birth of three pups that they say mark the return of an extinct species—the dire wolf. The statement proudly displayed on their website claims: “After a 10,000+ year absence, our team is proud to return the dire wolf to its rightful place in the ecosystem.” The pups, born between October 2024 and January 2025, have been given names that lean into myth and media—Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi.

But is this really a resurrection of a long-lost predator? Or are we simply looking at the latest in a growing trend of scientific ambition being dressed up as something more than it really is?

Colossal Biosciences has made headlines before. The Texas-based company has promised to bring back the woolly mammoth, recreate the extinct thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), and recently announced genetically engineered “woolly mice.” Their goal, at least on the surface, is to use gene editing to restore extinct species, all while building tools they claim will benefit biodiversity, conservation, and humanity. But with each announcement, the gap between what they’ve done and what they say they’ve done seems to grow a little wider.

In this case, Colossal hasn’t actually brought back the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus). What they’ve done is edit the DNA of grey wolves (Canis lupus)—a completely different species. Despite their similar appearance, dire wolves and grey wolves last shared a common ancestor about six million years ago. In fact, grey wolves are more closely related to jackals and African wild dogs than they are to dire wolves.

A 2021 genetic study completely upended what we thought we knew about dire wolves. Long assumed to be close cousins of the grey wolf, it turns out they were a separate evolutionary branch entirely, more distant than we ever realised. That makes Colossal’s claim even harder to swallow.

Still, the company says it has sequenced the dire wolf genome and edited just 20 genes in grey wolves to reflect dire wolf traits—15 based on dire wolf DNA and 5 that determine coat colour. These pups have not been cloned from dire wolf cells, nor do they share the full dire wolf genome. Genetically, they are still grey wolves, with a handful of targeted changes to size, muscle tone, and ear shape.

It’s worth noting that the dire wolf wasn’t just a bigger version of the modern wolf. It was a distinct species that lived across the Americas until about 10,000 years ago, likely wiped out during the last Ice Age. These animals were robust, with powerful jaws and a stocky build designed for taking down large prey. They may have resembled grey wolves in form, but they were fundamentally different in function—and in DNA.

Beth Shapiro, a lead scientist on the project, acknowledges this genetic gap but argues that “species concepts are human classification systems.” In other words, if it looks like a dire wolf, maybe that’s close enough. The problem is that logic starts to blur the line between scientific achievement and speculative branding. These animals might carry a few traits of the dire wolf, but they aren’t dire wolves. Not even close. That might seem harsh, but accuracy matters.

For now, the three pups are being raised on a closely monitored reserve and are not being allowed to breed. The company says they’re being observed carefully, with every splinter accounted for. That level of control is reassuring, but it also points to something deeper—this is an experiment, and everyone involved knows it.

This isn’t Colossal’s first resurrection. The company is also working on bringing back the woolly mammoth by editing Asian elephant DNA to express cold-adapted traits like fat storage and shaggy hair. The goal? Rewild parts of the Arctic to fight climate change. Whether that’s a bold solution or a scientific vanity project is still up for debate.

There’s something undeniably compelling about the idea of lost species walking the Earth again. Maybe it’s guilt over extinction, or maybe it’s just the romance of the wild. But turning that fascination into reality demands more than ambition—it requires responsibility, restraint, and honesty about what’s possible.

It’s easy to marvel at the technology, but not every scientific milestone needs to be a marketing event—especially when the subjects involved are living, breathing animals created in the name of something they’ll never understand.

If this all sounds a bit familiar, that’s because we’ve heard this story before—just not in a lab. In Jurassic Park, the warning wasn’t just about cloning dinosaurs. It was about the overconfidence that comes with believing we can fully understand and control life once we start rewriting it. And while we’re nowhere near engineering a T. rex, the idea of shaping animals to match our expectations—of resurrecting creatures for headlines—should give us pause.

Colossal’s work is impressive. The ability to edit genes at this level is a remarkable feat of science. But editing a handful of genes doesn’t bring back an extinct species, and calling it that may be more about marketing than biology. We’re not bringing back the past—we’re reinventing it, selectively, and often for show.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t explore the possibilities of de-extinction. But we need to be honest about what we’re doing. Because once we stop caring about the difference between what looks real and what is real, we risk repeating the same mistake that brought down Isla Nublar: we believe we’re in control—until we’re not.

The question now isn’t whether we can bring these animals back. It’s whether we should—and whether the creatures we’re making are really what we think they are.