section_path: Extinction/Revival efforts/Colossal Biosciences
section_name: Colossal Biosciences
paragraph_text: Colossal Biosciences
  
  In April 2025, it was announced that Colossal Biosciences used cloning and gene-editing to birth three genetically modified wolf pups, six-month-old males Romulus and Remus and two-month-old female Khaleesi. In-house scientists made 20 edits to 14 key genes in gray wolf EPC cells to match those genes from the dire wolf in order to recreate distinctive dire wolf traits. Colossal stated that these minor genetic modifications effectively revive dire wolves as a species. No ancient dire wolf DNA was actually spliced into the gray wolf's genome.
  
  Independent experts disagreed with the Colossal Biosciences' claim that these animals are revived dire wolves, asserting that they are "not a dire wolf under any definition of a species ever". The IUCN Species Survival Commission Canid Specialist Group officially declared that the three animals are neither dire wolves nor proxies of the dire wolves based on the IUCN SSC guiding principles on creating proxies of extinct species for conservation benefit. They commented that creating phenotypic proxies does not change the conservation status of an extinct species and may instead threaten the extant species such as gray wolves, and therefore concluded that the Colossal Biosciences' project "does not contribute to conservation." Colossal Biosciences released a clarifying document Alignment of Colossal’s Dire Wolf De-Extinction Project with IUCN SSC Guiding Principles in response.
  
  In May 2025, the company's chief scientist Beth Shapiro stated that the three animals are merely "grey wolves with 20 edits" as purportedly stated by the company "from the very beginning", acknowledging that it is impossible to bring back an extinct organism, or at least an organism "identical to a species that used to be alive". She admitted that the term "dire wolves" applied to the pups are a colloquialism, not scientific terminology. This was called a "major departure from what Colossal had said previously".