Dire wolf debate raises concerns on scientific overhype

Are dire wolves back? Many outlets, among them the New Yorker and Time magazine, reported April 7 that US biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences had brought the giant canines back from extinction . And almost immediately, scientists and conservationists began expressing outrage at Colossal’s claim. “It’s not a dire wolf. It’s misleading to call it that,” says Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University at Buffalo. “I can’t explain how pissed off it made me, because they’re still saying this stuff, and they know it to not be true.” David Shiffman, an environmental scientist and independent policy consultant, agrees. “This is not a dire wolf by any reasonable definition of a dire wolf,” he says. “This is a gray wolf that has had a tiny fraction of its genes modified to look more like what they think a dire wolf looked like. That means these animals are still gray wolves.”