While not the gigantic uber-canines of fantasy lore, these pups will become roughly-gray-wolf-sized dire wolves, and represent the first de-extincted animal species, raising a number of ethical questions about returning animals to ecosystems that may not be stable for long.

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[–] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

~~I was thinking this was bs - like they just bred a big, wolf-like dog and called it a dire wolf. But no! They took genetic material from dire wolf remains and made dire wolf puppies! Wow. That's pretty wild.~~

Edit: nvm. Yeah they lyin'.

[–] egrets@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You were right the first time - they're CRISPR-edited gray wolves engineered to exhibit the physical traits they found in dire wolf DNA.

There's an 80-gene difference between dire wolves and gray wolves, and they've modified 14 of what they felt to be the most variant differences.

It's still fascinating and tremendously difficult, and probably the best we can hope for in a very long time, but I don't feel Colossal are being totally honest in their presentation.

[–] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Damn. You're right. Those journalists were sneaky slipping in this quote and not challenging/clarifying it:

“We took a 13,000-year-old tooth, and a 74,000-year-old skull, and we made puppies,” Lamm told The Debrief.