The Dire Wolf's Future: What De-Extinction Looks Like Years from Now

One year ago today, scientists and researchers at Colossal Biosciences saw a breakthrough so startling that, a decade earlier, the scene would be written off as the ravings of a Michael Crichton novel. After less than five years of research and planning, a pair of pups born from a gray wolf mother, but which featured snow white hair and tails that better resembled a fox, came howling into the world.

It was the dire wolf resurrected, or at least an exact genetic replica of this lost apex predator from the Pleistocene Epoch of a hundred thousand years ago. And both of Colossal’s versions were baying into the laboratory fluorescence.

For Chief Animal Officer Matt James, it was something of a eureka moment. He of course had been preparing for the day for months, basing his planning on earlie