By Joyce A. Shelton, Ph.D.

The dire wolf has been the movie star of the media scene in recent days. Colossal Biosciences, a private US biotech company, has claimed in a jaw-dropping  press release to have brought back into existence an ancient animal that has been extinct for centuries. The dire wolf was recently popularized in the sci-fi/fantasy series, Game of Thrones. G of T author, George R.R. Martin, and other celebrities are donors to Colossal Biosciences.  Colossal says they have “de-extincted” the dire wolf using genetic technology. They isolated and sequenced some fragments of dire wolf DNA from a fossil tooth and skull. They then selected ...read more