Thousands of years, prehistoric animals roamed the earth. Such as wooly mammoths, dodo birds, and dire wolves. As of 2025, all the listed animals are extinct. Scientists have had their eyes on the possibility of de-extinction before on animals such as the dodo bird or a wooly mammoth. But in 2021, scientists set their eyes on reviving the extinct Dire Wolves. 

Dire Wolves were a larger, extinct canine species that roamed North and South America. Some of them could even reach the height of 5 feet while being able to weigh between 150 to 200 pounds! If they were here today, they would be 25% bigger than the biggest dog alive at this moment. They also were also extreme carnivores considering their meals consisted of 70% meat..

An organized group of scientists, Colossal Biosciences,  managed to retrieve DNA from the fossils of Dire Wolves, which went extinct about 13,000 years ago. Scientists would analyze ancient DNA in order to identify the key mutations that made the species distinct from its relatives. 

They would engineer the DNA of a living relative in order to analyze their genes. After a year of doing so, they managed to make 3 genetically modified Dire Wolves by the names of Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi.

Although the idea sounded relatively straightforward, Colossal faced challenges in their de-extinction efforts. For instance, a hurdle was the struggle of actually reconstructing the extinct genomes – A genome is a genetic material of species. 

Another one was them having to manage the massive amounts of genetic data generated during the process, requiring significant computational power and specialized tools.

But the main question everyone asks is, why? Colossal gets asked this hundreds of times and their response stays the same, to reverse extinction. Since the world has existed, there have been over 5 billion extinct species.

In the last year, there have been over 20 species knocked off of the endangered species list due to their extinction. Colossal’s job is to go out and really show that bringing back the extinct species is possible.