The media is the problem. The geneticists aren’t trying to pass them off as dire wolves. It’s an incredible accomplishment just to successfully get through birth. We can return more recently extinct animals, like the Dodo, with this process. DNA just doesn’t last long enough to clone long extinct species without editing in the missing parts using DNA from a similar species as reference.
As part of its effort to engineer mammoth-like elephants, Colossal and its collaborators are working to find gene variants that contributed to key mammoth traits, such as shaggy hair, cold tolerance and extra fat stores. To do this, they compare genomes extracted from the remains of dozens of mammoths and from other living and extinct relatives of the creatures, in search of protein-altering changes that evolved on the mammoth lineage.
You’re right. I misunderstood it as copying the DNA from mammoths, when they were actually editing the mouse DNA to mirror the evolutionary changes that mammoths underwent.
They have some partial DNA that they’re using to try and recreate woolly mammoth-like creatures. That’s probably what mixed me up. Thanks for the correction!
Also the dire wolf is actually a scam that would make P. T. Barnum proud.
The media is the problem. The geneticists aren’t trying to pass them off as dire wolves. It’s an incredible accomplishment just to successfully get through birth. We can return more recently extinct animals, like the Dodo, with this process. DNA just doesn’t last long enough to clone long extinct species without editing in the missing parts using DNA from a similar species as reference.
Slice in some frog dna… what could go wrong
They’re already testing out wooly mammoth DNA in mice.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00684-1
That’s not the same as what you’re claiming.
You’re right. I misunderstood it as copying the DNA from mammoths, when they were actually editing the mouse DNA to mirror the evolutionary changes that mammoths underwent.
They have some partial DNA that they’re using to try and recreate woolly mammoth-like creatures. That’s probably what mixed me up. Thanks for the correction!
https://colossal.com/mammoth/
Seems kind of cruel to bring back mammoths just as we’re in the process of cooking the planet.
The company itself claims they are dire wolfs. And the scientists are at least comfortable enough to lend their names to the lie.