Did Scientists Really Bring Back the Dire Wolf?

Dire wolf de-extinction: in April 2025 Colossal Biosciences said it had brought the dire wolf back from extinction with three white pups. Did it? We meet the real Ice Age dire wolf, look at what the DNA says, and check what is actually living behind that fence. In this video: who the real dire wolf was and how it hunted, why the La Brea Tar Pits hold more dire wolves than any other predator, why it died out while grey wolves and coyotes survived, how ancient DNA showed it was barely a wolf at all, how Colossal made Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi with 20 gene edits, and why independent experts say they are not dire wolves. Chapters: 00:00 Back from extinction? 00:36 The real dire wolf 01:42 The La Brea Tar Pits 02:44 Why it vanished 03:24 The DNA twist: barely a wolf 04:43 How the white pups were made 06:08 The experts' verdict 07:12 So, is the dire wolf back? Sources & method: Ancient-DNA studies of dire wolf fossils, fossil collections from the La Brea Tar Pits, Colossal's own genome paper, and published statements by independent scientists and the IUCN SSC Canid Specialist Group. Body mass (60-70 kg) is an average for the species, not a maximum. The split from the grey wolf is 4-6 million years depending on the study (about 5.7 million in Perri et al. 2021, about 4.5 million in Gedman et al. 2026). That dire wolves were pale-coated has not been independently checked, and the idea that isolation from other canids left them open to new diseases is a hypothesis, not a proven fact. Key papers: Perri et al. 2021, dire wolves were a separate lineage, not a big grey wolf (Nature): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-03... Gedman et al. 2026, Colossal's dire wolf genome and ancestry analysis (Cell Genomics): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2026.1... Leonard et al. 2007, megafaunal extinction and the disappearance of a specialised Ice Age wolf (Current Biology): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.05... IUCN SSC Canid Specialist Group, the three animals are neither dire wolves nor proxies (via International Wolf Center): https://wolf.org/headlines/conservati... BBC News, experts dispute Colossal's claim: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g... Subscribe for more stories of the Ice Age and the animals that lived before modern comforts. #direwolf #deextinction #iceage