Dire wolves once roamed throughout North and South America. The animals were larger and had stronger jaws than the gray wolves of today. Dire wolves went around 12,500 years ago. Now, a company has brought them back… in a way. Colossal Biosciences said that for the first time in thousands of years, dire wolves were born!
Business leader Ben Lamm and scientist George Church started Colossal Biosciences in 2021. The company is based in Dallas, Texas. It aims to bring back extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth, the dodo bird, and the Tasmanian tiger. In March 2025, the company announced progress on the woolly mammoth project. Colossal had made mice with long, golden hair similar to the hair on the ancient animals. On April 7, the company followed this mousy success with its howlingly huge news about dire wolves.
To create animals like dire wolves, scientists used dire wolf fossils found in Idaho and Ohio. “Our team took from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull,” Lamm explained. The DNA let the experts learn about the genes of dire wolves. They compared those genes to similar animals living today. That includes wolves, jackals, and foxes. The scientists found out that dire wolves were large with long, thick white fur. They pinpointed the genes that made the animals that way.
The closest living relative of the dire wolf is the gray wolf, so the team edited gray wolf genes to be like dire wolf genes. This work led to the birth of the three “dire wolf” puppies. Two twin male wolf pups, named Romulus and Remus, were born on October 1, 2024, and female Khaleesi followed with a birthdate of January 30, 2025. Lamm called these babies “healthy dire wolf puppies.”
Beth Shapiro, a lead scientist at Colossal, explained what made this possible. She said the team used “improved approaches to recover ancient DNA.” The experts also came up with new ideas on how to figure out information about the dire wolves even without perfect samples from the animals.
Experts at Colossal fed the growing pups from a bottle. Then, they provided them with solid food. They expect the wolves to reach 140 pounds (64 kg) when fully grown. That’s larger than an adult gray wolf. Colossal has not given the exact location of the animals’ new home in the northern United States. The dire wolves stay behind a tall fence in an enclosed area where a team can care for them and study their behavior.
Lamm called the birth of the wolves a “massive milestone.” He added, “I could not be more proud of the team.” He said that this milestone is “the first of many.”
Colossal isn’t only focused on extinct animals. The company’s tech can also be used to help that are still living. Along with the dire wolves, Colossal announced the births of four cloned red wolf pups. The red wolf is the most wolf in the world. Experts estimate that fewer than 20 remain in the wild, all in North America.
Colossal founder Church also works at Harvard University. He said the red wolf project is an example of why the company’s gene and DNA research is so crucial. He commented that this work should be done “before important endangered animal species like the red wolf are lost.”
By Diana Richard
Updated April 8, 2025, 5:00 P.M. (ET)
