Move Over Game of Thrones, The Real Dire Wolf Is Back!

Nearly 10,000 years ago, the last dire wolf to roam the plains of North America echoed a final howl across the land. Afterward there was only silence from this once prolific apex predator. That is until October 2024. For that was the month Colossal Biosciences had its biggest breakthrough yet in their ambitious de-extinction efforts. It was the month a pair of dire wolf brothers, the aptly named Romulus and Remus, raised their heads and bayed in a Texan laboratory.

According to Colossal CEO Ben Lamm, filmmaker Peter Jackson wept when he saw a video like the one below of the snow-white pups howling. It was the first time in millennia anyone had heard such a cry.

Indeed, the return of the dire wolf is an extraordinary breakthrough for Colossal and the future of gene-editing and CRISPR technology. When we spoke with Lamm last week ahead of the announcement, he acknowledged it took them all of 18 months from the beginning of the process of exploring whether they could bring back the dire wolf to the birth of Romulus and Remus last year—since then a third of at least eight planned wolves was also born. She would be Colossal’s first female dire wolf: Khaleesi.