"They Didn't De-Extinct Anything" - No Substantial Differences Between "Dire Wolves" And Those Living In North America

[hatrack]

EDIT

Money poured into Colossal from Hollywood and venture capital firms. The Texas-based start up, co-founded by Lamm and a Harvard geneticist, George Church, was valued at more than $10bn (£7.5bn) at its most recent fundraising round. American socialite and media figure Paris Hilton, filmmaker Peter Jackson, and former American footballer Tom Brady are among the investors, and the company now funds more than 100 scientists working to bring back extinct species from the dead.

Colossal’s approach has also caught the attention of the powerful: the Trump administration cited the “resurrection” of the dire wolf as it made efforts to cut the endangered species list in the US. “It’s time to fundamentally change how we think about species conservation,” said the US interior secretary, Doug Burgum. “We need to continue improving recovery efforts to make that a reality, and the marvel of ‘de-extinction’ technology can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.” In the future, he said, “‘de-extinction’ can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.”

EDIT

Amid the scientific reaction, Colossal’s chief scientist, Beth Shapiro, a leading expert on ancient DNA, acknowledged to New Scientist that: “It’s not possible to bring something back that is identical to a species that used to be alive. Our animals are grey wolves with 20 edits that are cloned.” Many researchers in the sector who are not employed by Colossal have been far stronger in their criticism of the company’s claims. Nic Rawlence, director of the palaeogenetics laboratory at the University of Otago in New Zealand, is an expert on the moa, which the company is trying to resurrect. Bringing it back from the dead is not possible, Rawlence says. “Extinction is still for ever. Charles Darwin nicely summed it up when he said, ‘when a group has once wholly disappeared, it does not reappear; for the link of generation has been broken.’

“Rather than true de-extinction, Colossal’s attempts are genetically engineered poor copies at best, passed off as the real deal,” he says. “Colossal are preying on people’s desire to undo the sins of the past. However, to achieve this, Colossal is spreading misinformation and undermining trust in science by attacking critics.” In a number of academic journals and scientists’ commentaries, the company’s announcements were met with deep scepticism. The geneticist Adam Rutherford called the mammoth announcements “elephantine fantasies” that would only be possible with the invention of time travel. Others argue that overhyped claims of bringing back lost species weaken trust in science and scientists. “I don’t think they de-extincted anything,” Jeanne Loring, a stem-cell biologist, told Nature.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/31/colossal-ben-lamm-deextinction-dire-wolf-dodo-tasmanian-tiger-aoe

Ed. - There's much more at the original article - AI/bot smear campaigns against scientists critical of Colossal's marketing campaign, the CEO citing support "from crypto", etc.

[sue4e3]

1. I say doing something is better than doing nothing

while I don't believe in bringing the woolly mammoth back, i say work on de extinction or at least genetic bottle necks in vulnerable species