Researchers launch new effort to revive extinct species
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Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Meet Khaleesi: First female dire wolf is brought back from EXTINCTION - 12,000 years after the species vanished
It has been over 12,000 years since the last dire wolves vanished from the Earth. But the apex predators, made famous by Game of Thrones, are once again growing their pack. Last year, Colossal Biosciences genetically engineered the first litter of dire wolf pups, bringing this ice age species back from extinction. Now, the first female dire wolf has finally been introduced to her two older brothers for the first time. The male pups, Romulus and Remus, are now approaching one year old and have grown to be much larger than grey wolves of a similar age. The female dire wolf, named Khaleesi after the Game of Thrones character, is just six months old and a lot smaller than her two older siblings. Khaleesi had been raised separately for health monitoring and individual development, but Colossal Biosciences decided it was finally time for a family reunion. In an adorable new video, you can watch Khaleesi and her siblings happily playing together as their handlers watch on carefully. To create Khaleesi, Colossal Biosciences started by reconstructing the dire wolf genome from genes found in fragments of bone. Using this genome as a reference, scientists then genetically modified a grey wolf embryo so that it closely resembled the extinct dire wolf. This hybrid embryo was then implanted in a surrogate dog mother, which gave birth to an animal which is extremely similar to a dire wolf. The males, born in October 2024, grew rapidly, reaching over 40 kg (90 lbs) in just six months. Although the males and females were initially raised separately, Colossal Biosciences is now working to bring them together into a single pack. Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm told USA Today: 'We're working through the socialisation and the introduction of Khaleesi into the pack. 'They're starting to behave more and more like wolves. We don't want them to be lap dogs.' In this video, Khaleesi is let out into a large enclosure on Colossal Biosciences' 2,000–acre wildlife reserve, where she is given the chance to meet her brother, Romulus, for the first time. What is the dire wolf? The dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) is an extinct wolf species that roamed the Americas as recently as 13,000 years ago. Dire wolves were as much as 25 per cent larger than grey wolves and had a slightly wider head, light thick fur and stronger jaw. As hyper–carnivores, their diet comprised at least 70 per cent meat from mostly horses and bison. Dire wolves went extinct at the end of the most recent ice age, around 13,000 years ago. Since Romulus is much larger than Khaleesi, the smaller female was initially a little uncertain. Paige McNickle, manager of animal husbandry at Colossal Biosciences, says: 'At first, she was a little like, 'Whoa, he's right there."' However, after giving each other a sniff, the pair soon set off in a playful run. 'They were playing with each other. Their ears were up the entire time, which is a good, happy, calm, wolf behaviour that we were hoping to see,' says Ms McNickle After Khaleesi and Romulus had been introduced, Romulus was removed, and Remus was brought into the enclosure. Ms McNickle says: 'They were both excited. Everybody was so good in play, but Remus is almost more gentle than Romulus. 'Romulus is just a little bit bigger, and Remus did really good. We saw lots of play behaviours. 'They kept their ears up, they wagged their tails. They followed each other around. They all got to explore the pool together. When they got hot, they went right over and cooled themselves off, especially Khaleesi.' Then, finally, the whole trio were allowed to play together as a group, marking the first time a pack of male and female dire wolves has been together in over 12,000 years. Although Khaleesi became a little frightened or uncertain at times, Mr Lamm says that she has now 'been completely accepted into the pack.' However, Colossal Biosciences' pack won't stop at just three dire wolves. Mr Lamm says the company has plans to engineer two to four more dire wolves over the coming years. Rather than allowing the dire wolves to breed, Colossal Biosciences wants to engineer the wolves from different cell populations so that the pack has more genetic diversity. Once the pack contains multiple dire wolves at different ages, natural pack dynamics and hierarchies should start to emerge. Currently, Remus, the smaller of the two males, appears to be emerging as the leader. Mr Lamm says that Remus 'kind of became the star' and that the young wolf 'really has this take–charge attitude'. Colossal Biosciences says it has plans to engineer two to four more dire wolf pups to introduce into the pack before they will be allowed to breed Colossal Biosciences plans to keep the dire wolf pack enclosed in the nature reserve and feed them meat, rather than letting them hunt wild game. However, some experts have warned that a large pack of ice age predators could become dangerous. Nic Rawlence, a palaeontologist at the University of Otago, previously told Daily Mail: 'If released into the wild in large enough numbers to establish a self–sustaining population, this new wolf could potentially take down prey larger than that hunted by grey wolves. 'There would also be the potential for increased human and wolf conflict. This sort of conflict is increasing as wolf populations recover in the USA.' Inside the ambitious plan to 'de–extinct the Dodo': How scientists are using stem cell technology to bring back the extinct species It's one of the most famous extinct animals of all time, ruthlessly hunted to extinction by humans in just a few decades. Now, scientists are edging closer to bringing the famous dodo back to its original home of Mauritius, the island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. US startup Colossal Biosciences, based in Dallas, Texas, is using stem cell technology and genome editing to create a modern approximation of the species. At a cost of over $225 million (£180 million), it is 'de–extincting' the dodo more than 350 years after it was wiped out from Mauritius by European explorers. Scientists have already achieved the monumental feat of sequencing the full genome of the extinct species, from bone specimens and other fragments. The next step is to gene–edit the skin cell of a close living relative, which in the dodo's case is the Nicobar pigeon, so that its genome matches that of the extinct bird.
Metro
6 days ago
- Metro
The woolly mammoth and a 30ft sea cow could all soon be back from the dead
If all goes to plan, Ben Lamm's next Christmas card to his friends will be of him posing with a woolly mammoth and a dodo. Lamm, 43, is the billionaire entrepreneur who founded Colossal Biosciences, a genetic engineering company, in 2021. What the company hopes to do is certainly colossal – working to resurrect extinct species, a process called de-extinction. The idea, Lamm told Metro, came during a call about human-based biology with George Church, a biologist at Harvard Medical School. 'By the way, I'm working to bring back mammoths and other extinct species to reintroduce them back into the Arctic and regenerate the ecosystem. But I have to go now. Goodbye,' Lamm recalled of the call. 'I had just heard the greatest thing ever, and then the call was over. I stayed up all night reading articles and listening to interviews about all these things.' Scientists have long dreamed of reviving extinct species. But earlier this year, Colossal researchers helped bring the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by Game of Thrones, back from the dead. Kind of. Scientists salvaged DNA from the fossils of dire wolves and edited 20 of their genes into their closest living relatives, grey wolves. (Think Jurassic Park just without the maniacal computer-network engineer.) After creating embryos and implanting them in surrogates, three pups were born: Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. The pups, with their dense, pale coats, were the first successful case of de-extinction, Colossal said. SOUND ON. You're hearing the first howl of a dire wolf in over 10,000 years. Meet Romulus and Remus—the world's first de-extinct animals, born on October 1, dire wolf has been extinct for over 10,000 years. These two wolves were brought back from extinction using… — Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) April 7, 2025 Now, Colossal wants to revive the woolly mammoth by giving elephants dense hair and thick fat, and reintroducing them to the Siberian tundra. Lamm said that his team are also 'exclusively focused' on two other extinct creatures: the Tasmanian tiger and the 12-foot-tall bird called Moa, though they haven't cracked how to insert edited genes into eggs yet. 'I'd personally love to bring back the Steller's sea cow,' Lamm said, referring to the extinct, 30-foot-long relative of the manatee, 'but there is nothing to gestate it in until we have artificial wombs working.' Inventing an undo button for extinction sounds like a sci-fi film, but Lamm's reasons for doing it are very much real. Many of the de-extinction candidates were eradicated by humans: The dodo was, well, as dead as a dodo by 1662 after people colonised Mauritius. The Tasmanian tiger was similarly wiped out after European settlers relentlessly hunted the striped marsupials in the 1800s, while the sea cow was wiped out by humans within 27 years of its discovery. Climate change threatens to make even more species vanish, and wildlife populations have already plummeted by 70%. 'Habitats around the planet are changing at a pace that is faster than evolution by natural selection can keep up,' explained Lamm. 'For many species, there is not enough time.' We're launching the Colossal Species Reintroduction Fund: $250K annually to help return missing and at-risk species to the wild. Rewilding restores ecosystems and helps prevent extinctions. This is one more step toward making extinction a thing of the past. — Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) August 5, 2025 Is de-exctinction, with the power of pipettes and computers, possible? Experts told Metro they aren't so sure. For one, the dire wolves Colossal brought back can be better described as modified grey wolves, said Benjamin Tapon, a PhD student at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences. 'By any practical definition of a species, no animal that Colossal has genetically engineered so far is anywhere near the extinct animal they are trying to emulate,' he said. 'Colossal is doing the equivalent of rebuilding the Library of Alexandria by printing PDFs of a few books and adding them to the shelves of the local public library.' As much as dire wolves and grey wolves share 99.5% of their DNA code, Tapon said, people and bananas share 60% of genes. 'It's a bit like saying that Romeo and Juliet shares 99% of its words with 50 Shades of Grey, or a book in another language,' he added. Alex de Mendoza, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary's Centre for Epigenetics, said Game of Thrones and Colossal got a big thing wrong about the dire wolf – they probably weren't white. The wolves lived in arid conditions, not the tundra, de Mendoza said, so they were probably a red-ish brown, adding: 'The habitat they once roamed on is no longer here. 'Most species extinctions these days occur due to habitat loss. If we couldn't preserve their habitat while they were still alive, why should we bring them back?' Capon wonders whether developing the technology to resurrect long-dead creatures could make people less diligent at preventing extinction. 'If we bring them back, will they be zoo attractions?' he said. As controversial as de-extinction is, both Capon and de Mendoza understand where Lamm is coming from. Capon would love a pet dodo, 'just not enough to try to bring them back.' More Trending De Mendoza said he would de-extinct the Tasmanian tiger: 'It is so frustrating that this wonderful animal disappeared in the 1930s. 'I think there's still habitat for it to survive, as long as people don't kill it… That said, my hopes for seeing a Tasmanian tiger come back from extinction and not just a kangaroo with some stripes are rather low.' Lamm understands where his critics are coming from, too. Which animals Colossal hopes to de-extinct take into account whether they'd have a positive impact on the environment or help conservation efforts. 'If bringing back the species can also inspire the next generation,' he added, 'then that is just another bonus.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: I went inside the Navy's secret battlespace barely anyone knows about MORE: I discovered the murky world of 'minor attracted people' – it's even more disturbing than you think MORE: Moment huge black bear is chased out of home by tiny Pomeranian dog
Daily Mirror
19-07-2025
- Daily Mirror
Horror MRI accidents from necklace error to sex toy 'dragged through body'
The huge magnetic force of MRI machines has led to some devastating disasters, including a tragic incident involving a gun. We look at the worst accidents over the years A man has tragically died after being sucked into an MRI machine in a terrible accident. Patients undergoing an MRI scan are asked to remove all piercings and jewelry as a safety precaution, as the machine generates strong magnetic fields. But a 61-year-old who didn't follow this advice sadly lost his life as a result. The nightmare unfolded on Wednesday at the Nassau Open MRI in Long Island, New York, police said. The man in his sixties was wearing a large metallic chain around his neck at the time of the incident, which caused him to be pulled into the machine. That resulted in a "medical episode," according to police. No other details were immediately provided, reports NBC news. The man, who has not yet been identified, was rushed to the hospital with critical injuries but he sadly died the next day, less than 24 hours after the horror incident. It is not clear if the man was a patient at the MRI center at the time of the incident or why he entered the room. Objects containing ferrous metals are pulled towards MRI machines and so must not be carried into the scan room. Following the freak accident, here The Mirror takes a look at other MRI nightmares. Sex toy horror A woman was left with horrendous injuries after a sex toy she left inside her was dragged through her body during an MRI scan. The 22-year-old had inserted the "butt plug" in her back passage before she went for the scan. But the item reacted dangerously with the scanner, causing it to be dragged from her rectum and up into her body. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners use powerful magnets to produce images of what is inside the body. The results of MRI scans are then used to help diagnose conditions and plan treatments. The woman who inserted the sex toy had believed it was made entirely out of silicone but it actually contained metal in its core. An image of the sex toy being dragged up through the body has circulated online and led to warnings about wearing metal objects during the scan. A X user shared the picture and captioned the post: "Never wear a butt plug to your MRI appointment. My God." Although harmless to human tissue, the magnetic field an MRI generates is 30,000 times stronger than that of the earth, capable of accelerating an object to dozens of feet per second. Nurse's freak accident It's not just patients who suffer from MRI scan malfunctions. At Redwood City Medical Center in Redwood, California, a nurse was crushed in a freak accident with an MRI machine. According to the report, the MRI's magnetic force caused the bed to be "pulled uncontrollably" into the machine. Nurse Ainah Cervantes became pinned between the bed and the machine, suffering crushing injuries, according to KTVU. "I was getting pushed by the bed," she said, according to a report obtained by the news channel. Gun horror On January 16 2023, a man who took his mother to have an MRI scan ended up with a bullet in his abdomen when the magnets in the machine caused his gun to involuntarily discharge. Leandro Mathias de Novaes accompanied his mother to the scan at the Laboratorio Cura in São Paulo, Brazil. The machine yanked had the weapon from his waistband, causing it to go off and shoor him. He wa rushed to the São Luiz Morumbi Hospital, where he hung on for weeks, before eventually succumbing to his injuries on February 6. He was rushed to the São Luiz Morumbi Hospital but sadly died weeks later on February 6. Following the accident, a spokesperson for Laboratorio Cura said: "Both the patient and his companion were properly instructed regarding the procedures for accessing the examination room and warned about the removal of any and all metallic objects." The facility's PR added that both Novaes and his mother signed a form regarding the protocols, but that the lawyer failed to mention his weapon and entered the unit with it "by his own decision." Sucked into scanner A man died after being sucked into an MRI machine while visiting a relative at a hospital. The incident occurred in Mumbai India, when Rajesh Maru, 32, was pulled towards the machine by its magnetic force after he entered the room carrying an oxygen cylinder, the city's police said in a statement. The victim's uncle said Maru had been asked to carry the cylinder by the junior staff member who assured him the machine was switched off. "A doctor and another member of staff were arrested for causing death due to negligence," Mumbai police spokesman Deepak Deoraj told AFP. The man is sad to have died from inhaling liquid oxygen that leaked from the cylinder which was damaged after hitting the machine. Fatal brain trauma In 2001, a six-year-old cancer patient was tragically killed during a routine brain scan due to the 'missile' effect of MRIs. The boy died a month later from head injuries and brain trauma after being struck by a nearby oxygen tank due to the machine's massive magnet. Hospital officials say the oxygen tank was "introduced" into the exam room while the machine's magnet was on. Hours of agony Two hospital workers spent four hours pinned between a highly magnetic MRI machine and a metal oxygen tank. The 4ft tank was pulled across the room by the machine at Tata Memorial Hospital in New Delhi, India, leaving porter Sunil Jadhav and technician Swami Ramaiah seriously injured. The 28-year-old porter was asked to fetch an oxygen mask but thought he was being asked to fetch a whole tank, the Mumbai Mirror reported. The technician, 35, suffered punctured bladder and severe bleeding from his abdomen Normally the incident could have been over within seconds, but the machine's emergency shut-off switch failed to work, hospital authorities said.
