After 12,000 years, the Dire Wolves have been brought back from extinction thanks to the expert team at Colossal Biosciences, and they have already made a big impression on the world at large. Colossal introduced everyone to Remus, Romulus, and Khaleesi earlier this week, and their introduction was made even better with a delightful photo on Game of Thrones’ iconic Iron Throne. ComicBook had the chance to speak to Colossal Co-Founder and CEO Ben Lamm about bringing the Dire Wolves back from extinction, as well as their efforts to help the Red Wolf avoid extinction, George R.R. Martin’s first meeting with the wolves, and the high expectations for James Gunn’s Superman.
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Colossal started this process by extracting DNA from two key sources, those being a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old inner ear bone. Since that origin point the team has gathered 500 times the data that was available previously regarding Dire Wolves between resampling previous samples and discovering new samples, though even with all that data, there are still more than a few surprises along the way.
“So we knew that they were white, which was pretty awesome, but things that we didn’t know is that they almost have, we can tell that they’re white from the genomes, but we can’t tell exactly. We can tell what their fur type was, but until we engineered in their fur type, we didn’t know what their fur type was actually going to be like,” Lamm said. “They almost have like a mane. It’s crazy. Like this cool wolf lion.”
“We didn’t know their eyes would be so golden yellow. A lot of wolf eyes are yellow, but they’re beautiful. You can see also the muscular structure when they walk and stuff like that,” Lamm said. “And their hair, I wouldn’t say this, but they say that their hair is, in the right light, is almost iridescent, which is pretty cool, but I mean, they’re so thick, both structurally and physically. And then they’ve got this incredible mane. It’s crazy.”
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When the three Dire Wolves made their big debut, there was also that epic picture on the Iron Throne, and that was thanks to Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson.
“So Peter Jackson bought the actual Iron Throne. The Iron Throne was in Dallas, so I actually took a photo of them. We put them on the throne because I mean, it’s like a baby. When you bottle feed them they get sleepy and they fall asleep. We put them on the Iron Throne which we thought was just a great homage to the fans,” Lamm said.
It was also Jackson who put Lamm in touch with Martin, which would then lead to an unforgettable moment when Martin met the Dire Wolves for the first time. Jackson got Lamm and Martin on the phone together, but Martin didn’t know what Lamm was about to reveal. “I said, look, I’m not asking for money. I’m not asking to be a part of anything. I just feel an ethical responsibility that while Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering and all these other things had Dire Wolves in it, you made Dire Wolves a household name, and so I have something to show you,” Lamm said.
“And I showed it to him, and he goes, are those real Dire Wolves? These aren’t CGI? And he took off his glasses, he started crying. He’s like, this is incredible, and I said I want you to meet them. So he flew out. We made him sign the craziest NDA ever. He then flew out to, he’s actually one of the few that’s been to the ecological preserve,” Lamm said. “Flew him out to the ecological preserve, saw them, got to hold Romulus, and he and his wife and everyone got to see them. And that’s when he gave me the quote. He goes, I write about magic, but you have actually created magic.”
While there are three Dire Wolves, Colossal also created four Red Wolves, and if current discussions pan out, Colossal could be leading the charge in finally getting the Red Wolves off the endangered species list.
“And last but certainly not least while we made three Dire Wolves, we made four Red Wolves because we try to pair every de-extinction event with a species preservation, and so there’s only about 15 Red Wolves left in the wild. About 100 in captivity and breeding programs, but only 15, and more importantly they come from 12 founder lines,” Lamm said. “We actually engineered new founder lines, and so we have three Dire Wolves, and four Red Wolves, and those four Red Wolves came from three new founder lines. So it increases the genetic diversity of the red wolves by 25%.”
While there has been a program to try and save the Red Wolf, it’s still endangered, but during the course of their work on the Dire Wolves’ de-extinction, a new technology was developed to clone from certain cells in the blood. That’s allowed for a number of innovations and could have a major impact on the de-extinction of the Red Wolf.
“We developed a new technology to clone from what’s called endothelial progenitor cell, cells that are in the blood. So not only are we cloning Red Wolves and we’re now talking to the United States government to see if we can help lead that program to save them, because we could save the Red Wolves in six months,” Lamm said. “Like the technology we have, in six months we could remove them from the endangered species list within six months. Only 3% of species that go on the endangered species list ever come off, and some of those are for political reasons, not even for real reasons. It’s insane to me that the Red Wolves are not saved, so we’re working to save them, and it’s pretty cool.”
“In typical cloning, you have to take pieces of the skin, biopsies, anesthetize the animal. We simply isolate this type of cell called the EPC and endothelial progenitor cell. We developed it on our path to the Dire Wolf and then said, hey, I wonder if it’ll work for Red Wolves, and it worked immediately. We can just take a blood draw, so it’s also non-invasive, and it helps with our biobanking initiatives because we can take blood, clone them, put the rest of the blood in a biobank, and essentially genetically back them up. So the Dire Wolf project is super cool and it’s leading to insane innovations,” Lamm said.
Now, I couldn’t let Lamm go without talking about some geeky things, and that included the highly anticipated (and at times hotly debated) Superman from James Gunn and DC Studios. We previously spoke about Superman’s place in Lamm’s history with comics, and he is excited to see some very different aspects of the Man of Steel brought to the big screen for the first time.
“I’m excited. Look I mean, James Gunn, I think everyone thought, and I do want to take credit for this because you ask my friends, I think everyone thought that when Marvel greenlit Guardians of the Galaxy, they were like this is just weird and dumb, and he crushed it, right? He crushed it. Guardians 1 is my second favorite movie of all time, of all time. Only beaten by Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Lamm said.
“I get chills watching. I think that some people, there’s been some mixed reactions on the new Superman trailers and stuff, but he knows how to tell, like, he knows how to find the right balance. You’ve got to think about, that’s exactly how a dog would act. You call your dog, it’s going to jump on you, it’s going to laugh, it’s not going to know there’s something wrong, but then it’s there for you. And so I think that this reboot of Superman and James Gunn is going to be pretty awesome, and I thought that Krypto scene, it’s very humanizing,” Lamm said.
“He’s sitting there in pain, and of course the dog’s first thing to do is jump on you. We’ve all had that moment where our dog has jumped on the wrong part of our male body and it hurts like hell, or we’re sore and the dog jumps on us, and so it’s very real. It’s funny because it’s real. Yeah, I’m excited,” Lamm said.
“We’ve had a lot of Batman stories. We’ve had a lot of Superman, like, I love Zack Snyder. I like the dark Zack Snyder Superman stuff. I thought that the Man of Steel stuff was great, but I do like this broadening,” Lamm said. It’s exciting to see a lot of stuff like Krypto come from the comics that no one’s ever thought of, or no one’s ever been ballsy enough to put it into a movie, and James Gunn’s ballsy enough to put it into a movie.”
What do you think of the return of the Dire Wolves, and what do you want to see Colossal take on next? You can find even more details on the return of the Dire Wolves on the official Colossal Biosciences website here.
