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Featured articleDire wolf is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
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January 12, 2017Good article nomineeListed
April 20, 2017Peer reviewReviewed
May 29, 2017Featured article candidatePromoted
Current status: Featured article


direwolf

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I propose that this article remains about the Dire wolf (Canis dirus) and should not be confused with the direwolf (note the one-word name) that relates to the series of novels forming A Song of Ice and Fire and the television series Game of Thrones. Editors wanting to contribute to the direwolf topic are referred to those articles. Any edits to this Dire wolf page regarding the direwolf will be removed. Please vote either YES or NO. William Harris • talk • 10:34, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus WP:CONS is full support for this proposal. It is now implemented. William Harris • talk • 04:31, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal - change of genus: Canis →Aenocyon

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I propose that the genus of the direwolf be changed in this article from Canis to Aenocyon based on the findings of a major genetic study, which suggests that they are a separate lineage to genus Canis and proposes the older (1918) genus name of Aenocyon. Study found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03082-x (with publicly available news report found at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dire-wolves-were-not-really-wolves-new-genetic-clues-reveal/) William Harris (talk) 11:01, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus WP:CONS is full support for this proposal. William Harris (talk) 06:49, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should we still list this species as extinct?

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After efforts from colossal biosciences these species have been reintroduced, should we still list it as extinct? Raggedrogue (talk) 04:42, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See the lengthy discussion above. We'd need a lot more independent sources, confirming wide acceptance of the de-extinction by experts, before going that far - a listing by the IUCN would be good, although not essential. Anaxial (talk) 04:52, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We need to wait for the peer-reviewed paper to come out along with more sources. A somewhat similar case to this is quagga, a proxy has been recreated in modern times, but its article still treats it as extinct due to the animals from the Quagga Project not widely being considered members of the taxon. Although, quagga was through backbreeding as opposed to cloning and genome editing like this dire wolf project. Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 05:10, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But should we not add what we already have on this discussion to the page?
The question of whether the species de-extinct or not deserve attention in the page I would think. 176.230.114.60 (talk) 05:53, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Genome editing and back-breeding are two methods to the same end: creating a facsimile of an extinct taxon via modification of an extant one. It still remains to be seen whether these wolves actually match the Aenocyon dirus phenotype as Colossal claims. That can only be tested once these wolves are fully-grown (and then probably deceased), so their skeletal morphology can be compared to dire wolf fossils. Since that has yet to happen, and these wolves admittedly lack any actual dire wolf DNA, I concur with others in this thread that the dire wolf remains extinct. Shuvuuia (talk) 21:51, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also want to add that another difference between these animals and Rau's quaggas is that these animals display different behaviour from grey wolves. The Rau's quaggas to my knowledge still act like Burchell's zebras. However, until the paper is published and more opinions from multiple different perspectives come out, I agree that it should treated as extinct for the time being. Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 21:57, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An animal that has simply genetically modified dire wolf characteristics to be added to the distantly related gray wolf cannot be called a dire wolf itself, and it has not been reintroduced. Similar case is Aurochs, while there are cows represented similar morphology, they are not aurochs themselves and it is still listed extinct. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 07:07, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, a wolf that has been slightly modified to physically resemble what a dire wolf may have looked like does not mean the dire wolf is not extinct. It does not have dire wolf DNA. FunkMonk (talk) 10:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    They claim the Grey Wolf has 99.5% shared DNA with the Dire Wolves. To my knowledge, using DNA from a 13,000 year old and a 72,000 year old fossils they were able to figure out what the Dire Wolf DNA looked like. Using this, they edited the 0.5% of the DNA to match that of the Dire wolf. I feel like saying they absolutely cannot be Dire Wolves because they didn't splice in Dire Wolf DNA is not the right way to think about this. If I programmed code that looked exactly like someone else's code and the results of the code are the same, is it not the exact same code? They looked at the "code" of the Grey Wolf and the "code" of the Dire Wolf, edited the Grey Wolf Code to match that of the Dire Wolf, and the result was a Dire Wolf.
    Although I would like to see the peer reviewed paper and how the scientific community feels about it, I would say if everything I said above is true, they are definitely Dire Wolves. 45.26.246.25 (talk) 14:32, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    To the best of my understanding, they took two wolf isolated subfossils (mark it, wolf subfossil), deemed it was direwolfy enough (given the alleged material used, might as well have been Canidae indet. material for what we now), decided to clone it based on god knows what since nothing is published publicaly anyway, also cloned a few red wolves while they were at it, and somehow decided that their finding, which goes pretty much against a decade of knowledge about the relationships between A. dirus and modern wolves, were good enough to clone shit up. Also consider that wolves, be them white or grey, are born with dark fur, unless of skin defect (which again those don't have because albinism or leucism would be a huge issue for investors). For them to be white at birth, it means that there is an undisclosed admixture of dog within them. And don't pull the "being white is a dire wolf thing" : while I can believe the DNA testing for color wasn't erroneous, since the remains would have been deposited at the feet of an ice sheet, it remains that dire wolves came from the south, like wolves, and probably gave birth during the early spring, like wolves, in which case a white fur would have been a huge hindrance. healthy white grey wolves in the wild are rare for a reason. Also it looks a bit too much like the wolf from Game of Thrones so I wouldn't even be surprised if that one was involved too in the cloning process. In other word, they're a genetic mess, but probably more in the normal wolf kind of mess.
    If I took your DNA, compared it with a chimp, then started hacking the chimp DNA to make it vaguely look like yours, so that it stands upright, is mostly bald with your hair colour, and is slightly larger, to the point that it would look superficially like a human (but still have, for what we know, the behaviour of a clinically insane chimp begging to be put down due to various dramatic organ failures), would you A) call him your little human brother, or B) call pest control ? Larrayal (talk) 14:51, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If it looks like a dire wolf, acts like a dire wolf and scientists are saying its a dire wolf, it's probably a dire wolf and or at least a facsimile of one. Nonetheless we should go off of what reliable sources are saying and give this story more time to develop before making any decisions. Zyxrq (talk) 15:56, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not really how it works. If only a company with very vested, commercial interests in these grey wolves with admitted 0% dire wolf DNA claim they're dire wolves, we don't simply take it at face value and wait until the unlikely event that other researchers will independently confirm it before we report it as fact. FunkMonk (talk) 16:09, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah that’s why I said “we should go off of what reliable sources are saying and give this story more time to develop before making any decisions.” It’s also why I called them a “facsimile” of dire wolves. Zyxrq (talk) 16:19, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They have a peer-reviewed paper coming out soon with information on what changes were made and the two genomes they sequenced from skull and tooth. We need to wait for it to be published before making any massive changes to the article. Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 21:07, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJIl_R9xUuk They released a response to the criticism Gorgonopsi (talk) 11:58, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Five minutes in, they basically admit they're not dire wolves. FunkMonk (talk) 12:20, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
you haven't watched the full video otherwise you would've known, they also say what they did was the very definition of the de-extinction, that Dire-wolves by the time they went extinct were essentially hybrids of Wolves and Dire-Wolves due to intermixing which meant while they wern't any pure dire-wolves, essentially despite being seperate lineages, Dire-wolves had more in-common genetically to wolves than wolves are to jackals, this scientist answering the questions is the same who initially placed dire-wolves as the last of said ancient lineage. please watch in full before writing. Gorgonopsi (talk) 09:41, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All of these claims are unsupported by the most recent publication on the subject, which used the genome recovered by Colossal. The IUCN has spoken against this being the "very definition of de-extinction". Basing your opinions off more sources than a video from the company itself is advisable The Morrison Man (talk) 11:16, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are currently working with the IUCN Species Survival Commission to make sure if their three recreated wolves align with their guidlines for de-extinct species. I have said many times that we should wait for their papers to finish peer-review and that we need to wait for information instead of confirming our biases.
https://www.reddit.com/r/deextinction/comments/1k5gauj/comment/momcjin/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 17:39, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What is this conversation even about? The article doesn’t conclude anything about the de-extinction claims, so “we should wait” seems like a straw man. Strebe (talk) 18:29, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen many sceptical scientists in the coverage that isn't an interview with Colossal itself. We'll have to wait for the paper and the response to it, in a tweet Colossal mentioned that it should be out next week. The Morrison Man (talk) 22:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
>Using this, they edited the 0.5% of the DNA to match that of the Dire wolf.
This is a completely false description of what the company did, by the way - not that it matters to the Wikipedia article. 2601:14D:4D7F:750:71C9:EC1C:D5C2:3B6B (talk) 01:14, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@45.26.246.25 "Using this, they edited the 0.5% of the DNA to match that of the Dire wolf" My understanding was that they edited the grey wolf DNA to have the same or similar effects as the DNA of the dire wolf, resulting in the same or similar traits, or phenotype. However, it was my understanding that the actual DNA sequence of their "dire wolves" is different than that of dire wolves from the fossil record, Aenocyon dirus.
I understand "using the DNA of the dire wolf" to mean that the DNA includes an identical sequence of proteins to that present in dire wolf DNA, which could be accomplished by making copies of actual dire wolf DNA and splicing it into the grey wolf DNA. Again, it is my understanding that this is not what they did - if they had, they would have said so.
It is possible that some of their 20 changes to the grey wolf genome most closely resemble actual dire wolf DNA, as they did study it (see Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi#Genesis). However, I still feel that the genome of the resulting "dire wolves" would overwhelmingly match that of grey wolves, and not of dire wolves - it seems they made changes to the genome where it would affect traits like appearance and possibly behavior, not addressing the numerous small differences that wouldn't have much of an effect. I feel that genetic testing would likely say that these are grey wolves, not dire wolves. WrenFalcon (talk) 22:26, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From what the current sources tell us they made 20 edits modifying 14 genes in the gray wolves to match those found in the dire wolf genomes they recovered. The Morrison Man (talk) 22:57, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, because it’s just a modified Gray Wolf. Recent DNA analysis suggest Dire Wolves were part of the same genus. ExplorerKing (talk) 16:04, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is similar not exact same as the original but maybe add the mentioning of Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi in lead. Cwater1 (talk) 02:05, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a FA-level science-based article. It is based on references from scientific studies published in books and science journals. Sensationalist media articles, unsupported by peer-reviewed published research, have no place here. 14.2.203.227 (talk) 23:58, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Plenty of more damning articles coming out:[4][5] There's a snowball's chance in hell the IUCN or anyone but the Colossal company will accept the dire wold as "revived". FunkMonk (talk) 11:39, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How many times do I need to state that we should wait for the peer-reviewed paper before making final decisions instead of engaging in confirmation bias? Apparently, the major news outlets were not supposed to report on this until the paper was published, but The New Yorker published their article too early, leading to this conflict. Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 22:38, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't make much of a difference to us when the Colossal paper is published. What matters is whether independent scientists confirm their findings or not. FunkMonk (talk) 23:18, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Given that it is proposed that the dire wolf genetically falls into the extinct genus Aenocyon, it is not clear why any genticist would use a member of genus Canis - in this case Canis lupus - as a foundation for some gene tinkering. Given Aenocyon's genetic time of divergence from Canis of over 5 million years, a better candidate would have been the Black-backed jackal - genus Lupulella - which diverged from Canis 2.5 million years ago. The authors seem to want to have a "wolf" at any price. 14.2.203.227 (talk) 08:38, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Both are equally related to Aenocyon and are equally as good or bad to use as a candidate. The Morrison Man (talk) 12:44, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Dr. James G. Napoli (@JGN_Paleo): "Yesterday, @TIME broke news of a landmark advance in gene editing and de-extinction. This piece has proven divisive, and many criticisms I have seen are misplaced or incorrect. This 🧵 is intended to provide my take, based on my own expertise, and set the record straight." | nitter You should read this. Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 21:05, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Napoli should elaborate further on his statement that "Because closeness of relationship is determined by how far back two species share a common ancestor, this tree says that dire wolves are equally related to all jackals and wolves". Sure they are all related, but the BBJ has less "far back" (time distance) to go before it has a common ancestor with the dire wolf i.e. 2.5 million years. Not so the grey wolf, it must go "far back" some 5 million years. 14.2.203.227 (talk) 08:10, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The entire clade is equally closely related to Aenocyon, because their divergence time from that lineage is the same. The Morrison Man (talk) 11:38, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just popping in to concur that the dire wolf remains extinct. I worked in the tech industry long enough to recognize when newspapers were effectively regurgitating a tech industry press release and every single source I've seen that makes the claim that a species was de-extincted are clearly regurgitating a tech industry press release. Simonm223 (talk) 11:58, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently, some of the outlets broke the embargo on when to report this. The peer-reviewed paper was supposed to come out first like their previous project, but one of the outlets (I believe The New Yorker) broke the embargo too early, and lead to an obvious domino effect. Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 22:52, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that the wooly mouse paper is a pre-print so, technically, that is not an RS yet. Nor is it independent. Simonm223 (talk) 22:59, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Colossal Bioscience rejects the scientific idea of a "taxonomical species"

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https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/04/the-dire-wolf-is-back/

Related to the Dire Wolves controversies, Beth Shapiro says:

“Species concepts are human classification systems, and everybody can disagree and everyone can be right.” She adds, “You can use the phylogenetic [evolutionary relationships] species concept to determine what you’re going to call a species, which is what you are implying… We are using the morphological species concept and saying, if they look like this animal, then they are the animal.”

In my opinion, i think this is a very wrong and dangerous way of thinking. Claiming that an animal is this extinct animal because it looks like it sets a dangerous precedent for that company. Not only that, have these guys ever even heard of the concept of "convergent evolution".

Not only that, i find it funny that they claim they arent like the people in Jurassic Park, but are doing the same thing they did, which is to transform a DNA that they have and adding random species's DNA just so that it looks more attractive for the human mind (hence the lizard skin T-rex/Velociraptor that is completely unrealistic from what we now.) Stmbus (talk) 21:34, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This really shouldn't be discussed here, it is better for the Colossal Biosciences article. Have other reliable sources come out about criticising the statement, we cannot put our own opinions on her statement. Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 22:02, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ultimately, it's the same as everything else. She can argue for her own species concept, but unless it manages to defend its way into peer reviewed literature it doesn't count for anything. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 01:25, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, most discussion of Colossal's wolves should be moved to the article about the company, it really isn't that relevant here. FunkMonk (talk) 09:04, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think a precedent that should be followed would be the page on pigeons having a section on the end linking to the most common pigeon of all; the domestic pigeon. I think this is comparable as these new direwolves are modified members of a family that contains the extinct dire wolves; domestic pigeons are technically just one species of columbid that was modified into the many breeds we see today, using selective breeding, the classical method of gene editing. My main point is that the family's wikipage used to contain a lot more about domestic pigeons before it was moved to the more specific page; if editors focused on the Colossal direwolves page we wouldn't need to do that, which saves time and effort for everyone involved. Anthropophoca (talk) 19:00, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dire-wolf-isnt-back-but-heres-what-de-extinction-tech-can-actually-do/#:~:text=The%20resemblance%20between%20dire%20wolves,researchers%20said%20at%20the%20time.
It is extint due to convergent evolution 雄奇 (talk) 20:00, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In what way? FunkMonk (talk) 20:23, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not how the concept works friend. Convergent evolution doesn't mean the taxon dies out; you can see how marine snakes evolved several times, and we still have at least three extant lineages. Anthropophoca (talk) 20:26, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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