While not the gigantic uber-canines of fantasy lore, these pups will become roughly-gray-wolf-sized dire wolves, and represent the first de-extincted animal species, raising a number of ethical questions about returning animals to ecosystems that may not be stable for long.
I was thinking this was bs - like they just bred a big, wolf-like dog and called it a dire wolf. But no! They took genetic material from dire wolf remains and made dire wolf puppies! Wow. That’s pretty wild.
You were right the first time - they’re CRISPR-edited gray wolves engineered to exhibit the physical traits they found in dire wolf DNA.
There’s an 80-gene difference between dire wolves and gray wolves, and they’ve modified 14 of what they felt to be the most variant differences.
Damn. You’re right. Those journalists were sneaky slipping in this quote and not challenging/clarifying it: