In a short paper in Biology Letters, two researchers from Wheaton College, Andrew Davinack and Charlotte Daniels, have questioned whether the dire wolf was ever truly brought back from extinction. Their quarrel is less with the laboratory work than with the word that was attached to it: what Colossal Biosciences produced, they argue, is a grey wolf carrying some dire wolf features, not a revived species. Living things, they remind us, are not just their genomes but long, unbroken histories of descent, shaped by place, climate, and the company of other creatures, and an extinct lineage ends whe
Scientists Argue the 'Dire Wolf' Was Never Truly De-Extinct, Only Gene-Edited Grey Wolves
Grey wolves with some dire wolf traits, not the resurrection of a species
Mark
So what's the core claim here? Colossal didn't bring back the dire wolf?
Mimi
That's it. Davinack and Daniels say Colossal edited grey wolf cells to get larger bodies, bigger teeth and paler coats. Those are grey wolves with dire wolf-like traits, not the species returning.
Mark
And lineage-genome conflation is their name for the error?
Mimi
Yes. Treating a reconstructed genome as if it were the whole evolutionary lineage. They say extinction ends the lineage, not just the genetic information.
Luke
Worth noting this is an argument, not an experiment. It's a definitional position about what a species is. Others could define it differently.
Mimi
Fair. The paper is a case made in Biology Letters, and it rests on their view of species as continuous population-level lineages.
Mark
Where does habitat come in?
Mimi
Dire wolves lived over 10,000 years ago in a world with different climate, prey and predators. The authors say that's another break that makes extinction permanent.
Luke
That's their reasoning, though. The source doesn't say how much of that matters to the definition, or what Colossal would say in reply. We don't have Colossal's response here.
Mark
Do they think de-extinction is impossible?
Mimi
No. They say preserved cells or embryos are a more promising route, and cite the Pyrenean ibex in 2003, which didn't survive but has a stronger claim.
Luke
And they're not calling the engineering worthless. Their complaint is about labels.
Le Pouls
- A celebrated 2025 announcement that the dire wolf had returned is now being challenged in print, with two scientists insisting the claim was overstated.
- The critique cuts against a crowd of headlines that treated edited grey wolves as a resurrected predator, stirring a quarrel over what counts as a species.
- Davinack and Daniels are trying to force precision into the conversation, coining 'lineage-genome conflation' and urging companies and reporters to separate distinct goals.
- The argument is landing as a plea for honest labels: DNA can recreate traits, they say, but not a broken evolutionary line, and preserved cells or embryos may be the truer path.
In a short paper in Biology Letters, two researchers from Wheaton College, Andrew Davinack and Charlotte Daniels, have questioned whether the dire wolf was ever truly brought back from extinction. Their quarrel is less with the laboratory work than with the word that was attached to it: what Colossal Biosciences produced, they argue, is a grey wolf carrying some dire wolf features, not a revived species. Living things, they remind us, are not just their genomes but long, unbroken histories of descent, shaped by place, climate, and the company of other creatures, and an extinct lineage ends when that history does. The authors ask that we keep the language of resurrection for cases that honestly earn it.
A paper in Biology Letters has pushed back on one of the year's most celebrated biotech stories. Marine biologist Andrew Davinack and biochemist Charlotte Daniels, both of Wheaton College in Massachusetts, argue that the dire wolf was not brought back from extinction at all. What Colossal Biosciences did, they say, was edit grey wolf cells and breed animals with larger bodies, bigger teeth and paler coats. The result looks more like a dire wolf, but it is still a grey wolf with some borrowed features.
To name the error, the authors have proposed the phrase lineage-genome conflation. A genome is a blueprint, they argue, while a species is a living lineage: a population connected across generations by gene flow, selection, drift and the ecological world it inhabits. Extinction ends that lineage, and no reconstructed sequence can simply reattach it. Dire wolves disappeared more than 10,000 years ago, along with the climate, prey and predators that shaped them, and that break is, in their view, permanent.
Davinack and Daniels do not accuse scientists of bad faith. Many researchers already avoid the word de-extinction when it does not fit, and the authors direct their appeal toward companies and media outlets. They suggest separate labels for separate aims, such as lineage restoration, genetic recovery, phenotypic reconstruction, ecological substitution and historical community restoration, each with its own measure of success.
The paper is not a rejection of the field. The authors see preserved cells or embryos as a more credible route to genuine de-extinction, pointing to the Pyrenean ibex cloned in 2003, which died shortly after birth but has a stronger claim than the dire wolf. They also respect the engineering behind the dire wolf project. Their question is whether the language around it will become as careful as the science.
In a paper published in Biology Letters, two researchers from Wheaton College Massachusetts take aim at one of 2025's most talked-about biotech announcements: the claim that the dire wolf had been brought back from extinction. Marine biologist Andrew Davinack and biochemist Charlotte Daniels argue that it had not.
What Colossal Biosciences actually did, they say, was make genetic edits to grey wolf cells and breed animals that look more like dire wolves. The edited traits included larger bodies, bigger teeth and paler coats. In the authors' reading, that produced grey wolves carrying some dire wolf features, not a resurrected species.
Davinack and Daniels have coined a term for the mistake of calling this de-extinction: lineage-genome conflation. The idea is that a genome and a lineage are different things. In their words, extinction is the termination of an evolutionary lineage, not merely the disappearance of genetic information, and so de-extinction cannot recover an extinct species.
The argument has several parts. First, a species is more than its DNA. Genes, and the physical characteristics they produce, come out of a long and continuous evolutionary history, and any gap in that history breaks the connection and redefines the species. The authors describe species as historically continuous, population-level lineages shaped by gene flow, mutation, drift, selection, demographic history and ecological interaction. A reconstructed genome, even a highly accurate one, is at most a partial snapshot of an individual organism.
Second, there are the questions of population and habitat. Can a handful of engineered animals recreate the variation of a large population, or the historical setting that population lived in? The researchers suggest not. Dire wolves lived more than 10,000 years ago, in a world whose climate, food sources, predators and other environmental connections no longer exist. That is another break, they say, that makes the extinction permanent.
The authors acknowledge that many scientists, and the studies they write, take care not to use a term like de-extinction when it does not fit. Their appeal is aimed at private companies and media outlets, which they ask to be more responsible in reporting these advances. Loose language, they argue, misrepresents the science and makes it harder to put new techniques in context. They list distinct goals that deserve distinct labels: lineage restoration, genetic recovery, phenotypic reconstruction, ecological substitution and restoration of historical communities. Each, they write, requires different criteria of success.
The paper does not declare de-extinction impossible. The authors say preserved cells or preserved embryos are a more promising route, because they offer greater biological continuity and avoid some of the problems above. They point to the Pyrenean ibex in 2003, when scientists used a cell preservation technique. The animal did not survive, but the researchers say there is a stronger claim to de-extinction there than in the dire wolf case.
They are also careful not to dismiss the engineering itself. Work by companies such as Colossal Biosciences is not without merit as genetic engineering, they say; the point is to describe and evaluate it accurately. Genomic reconstruction, they conclude, may recreate selected traits or produce ecological proxies, but it cannot recover extinct species as historically continuous lineages. The open question now is whether companies and the press adopt more precise language.
Citations marquantes
De-extinction cannot recover extinct species because extinction represents the termination of an evolutionary lineage, not merely the disappearance of genetic information.— Davinack and Daniels, Biology Letters
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