‘Jurassic Park’ trends as everyone wonders the same thing about the ‘de-extinct’ dire wolves

Dire wolves are back, baby! AWOOO! Yup, after 10,000 years hanging out in the “extinct” file along with woolly mammoths, T-Rex, and the dodo, the dire wolf has launched itself back from the dead and three of them – Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi – are currently strutting around a secret ecological preserve having the time of their lives.

All too predictably, their unveiling has led to a chorus of naysayers complaining that Colossal Bioscience, the company that made them, is “playing God”. Still others have responded to the news with a blizzard of Jurassic Park memes, doubtless envisioning the dire wolves breaking free from their enclosure, stalking the terrified geneticists through their lab corridors, and feasting on their flesh using their bone-crackingly powerful jaws.

Meet the first dire wolves to exist in over 10,000 years https://t.co/PiXmBEGrk6 pic.twitter.com/NJl20cxp80

— TIME (@TIME) April 7, 2025

What people mostly forget about Jurassic Park is that everything was running fine until that awful Dennis Nedry shut down the fences while trying to steal the embryos. Sure, there were some dinosaurs breeding when they shouldn’t, but if you’re running a dinosaur zoo a couple more dinosaurs really isn’t the end of the world.

Anyhows, those posting Jurassic Park memes in response to this scientific breakthrough should realize the film’s true message isn’t that man shouldn’t play God, it’s that you should vet your employees more carefully and monitor them at all times. So as long as the tech bros over at Colossal Bioscience have done their due diligence and they don’t have a creepy fat guy in a Hawaiian shirt in charge of all their computer systems, they’ll be just fine.

But, interestingly, there actually is a neat parallel between these dire wolves and Jurassic Park. In the movie (and later in Jurassic World), it’s underlined that the dinosaurs in the park aren’t exact clones of prehistoric creatures, but rather novel genetically engineered organisms whose genomes have been reconstructed from mere fragments, meddled with by scientists, and augmented with frog DNA.

TIME's new cover: The dire wolf is back after over 10,000 years. Here's what that means for other extinct species https://t.co/LQtosdfiEf pic.twitter.com/bv8EbeefuW

— TIME (@TIME) April 7, 2025

This is also the case for Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. They are not clones derived from ancient DNA, but instead creatures created after scientists examined preserved dire wolf DNA, identified genetic differences between that and a gray wolf, and then edited the DNA of the gray wolf to replicate dire wolf traits. Colossal isn’t trying to hide this, freely admitting that “no ancient dire wolf DNA was actually spliced into the gray wolf’s genome”.

All of which means that technically, these animals aren’t dire wolves, but instead genetically modified gray wolves. But hey, let’s not split hairs. If scientists want to spend lots of money creating gigantic wolves considered “hypercarnivores” who are we to stop them? Here’s hoping we do soon get a real-world “Jurassic Park” where we can visit these three and many other sort-of de-extinct animals. And if those animals ever break free and eat some people? Well, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.