DFood and taxes are supposed to be what we can depend on in this life. But in 2025 the American entrepreneur Ben Lamm convinced much of the world that death does not have to be eternal after all.
This year, the billionaire's genetics startup Colossal Biosciences said it had resurrected the dire wolf, an animal that disappeared at the end of the last ice age, by altering the DNA of gray wolves. According to the company, it is also closer to bringing the woolly mammoth back from the dead by creating genetically modified “woolly mice.”
In a flurry of high-profile announcements and press releases, the company has launched projects to revive the Tasmanian tiger (also known as the thylacine), the dodo and the moa, a three-metre bird that has been extinct for 600 years.
“We made a lot of big promises to the world,” Lamm told the Guardian. “I think we're starting to get results.”
Lamm, a 44-year veteran of games and artificial intelligence startups, has brought brash showmanship and an entrepreneurial spirit from Silicon Valley to the genetic conservation sector—and his approach has so far been extremely profitable.
He quickly realized that announcing the species' resurrection was a recipe for hype and publicity. When the company announced its “woolly mouse,” he recalls, “people went crazy.”
Observing the response, Lamm says, “I thought, oh my God, they're going to go crazy with the dire wolves.”
He was right. When Colossal unveiled its interpretation of the dire wolf in April, the news made international headlines. enthusiastic profiles in Time magazine And New Yorker stated that “the dire wolf is back.”
Colossal invited the audience to listen to “the first howl of the dire wolf for more than 10,000 years” on YouTube. “Obviously, Dire Wolves was a huge hit and a fan favorite,” says Lamm.
Money poured into Colossal from Hollywood and venture capital firms. The Texas startup, founded by Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church, was valued at more than $10bn (£7.5bn) in its latest fundraising round. American socialite and media personality Paris Hilton, film director Peter Jackson and former American football player Tom Brady are among the investors. The company currently funds more than 100 scientists working to bring extinct species back from the dead.
Colossal's approach has also attracted the attention of the powers that be, with the Trump administration citing the “resurrection” of the dire wolf in an attempt to reduce the list of endangered species in the US.
“It's time to fundamentally change the way we think about species conservation.” This was stated by US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.. “We need to continue to improve recovery efforts to make this a reality, and the miracle of 'de-extinction' technology can help create a future in which populations are never put at risk.”
In the future, he says, “de-extinction could provide the basis for the conservation of modern species.”
BHowever, these statements were met with much less enthusiasm among scientists. Shortly after the announcement of the dire wolf, and with much less fanfare, a group of world leading canid experts have concluded that the company hasn't actually revived the look.
Rather, they made 20 changes to the DNA gray wolves, and the resulting animals were not significantly different from those now roaming North America, the group said.
Amid the scientific backlash, Colossal Chief Scientist Beth Shapiro, a leading expert on ancient DNA, recognized by New Scientist that: “It is impossible to bring back something identical to a species that was previously alive. Our animals are gray wolves with 20 changes that are cloned.”
Many researchers in the sector who do not work for Colossal are much harsher in their criticism of the company's claims. Nick Rawlens, director of the paleogenetics laboratory at the University of Otago in New Zealand, is an expert on the moas the company is trying to revive. It's impossible to bring him back from the dead, Rawlens says.
“Extinction is still forever. Charles Darwin summed it up nicely when he said, 'When a group has once completely disappeared, it does not reappear, because the link of generations is broken.”
“Rather than truly de-extinction, Colossal's efforts are at best genetically engineered bad copies passed off as the real deal,” he says. “Colossal capitalizes on people's desire to atone for the sins of the past. However, to achieve this goal, Colossal spreads misinformation and undermines trust in science by attacking critics.”
The company's claims have been met with deep skepticism in a number of academic journals and academic commentaries. Geneticist Adam Rutherford called giant “elephant fantasies” ads this would only become possible with the invention of time travel.
Others claim that exaggerated claims The return of lost species weakens trust in science and scientists. “I don’t think they resurrected anything,” Jeanne Loring, a stem cell biologist, told Nature.
These concerns have not slowed the company's progress. Over the next few years, Colossal's team of scientists will present their interpretation of the woolly mammoth. It will be a genetically modified Asian elephant adapted to live in -40C (-40F), with long hair, small ears and other mammoth characteristics interpreted from frozen DNA, says Lamm, who bristles at the suggestion that the creature may not be a mammoth.
“We believe in free speech, so if people want to call our mammoth a mammoth or a genetically modified, cold-hardy Asian elephant with mammoth alleles lost, [variants of genes] inserted through genetic engineering, we agree. Anything,” he says.
“If a child cares more about the loss of biodiversity and climate because they saw a colossal mammoth, who cares?” Lamm adds. “That's our point of view.”
For a number of scientists, public criticism of the company came at a cost. In July New Scientist reported that several scientists who criticized Colossal were the subject of articles apparently created by artificial intelligence as part of a mysterious smear campaign criticizing their credentials and academic records.
Lamm says the company has nothing to do with these stories. “We have a lot of public support from communities ranging from academia to cryptography; it's a big spectrum. People argue about things all the time. So if you're going to be a critic, you have to be confident that you can be criticized too,” he says.
The criticism angered Lamm. He points to Colossal's elephant conservation efforts and efforts to save the northern white rhinoceros as evidence that his company can change the way the industry operates. The company's website portrays its work as part of an effort to counter what some scientists call the loss of biodiversity sixth mass extinction of life on Earth.
“The worst part of conservation is the conservationists,” he says. “Many existing models are not working, and we need new models. The reality is that modern conservation – although it works – is not working at the rate at which we are destroying species and changing the planet.
“We need to get more of these incredible scientists off the couch and out in the field saving animals. They need to report this not as part of some paid scientific paper, but in a way that makes a kid say, 'Oh, I want to go to Africa and save elephants.' Oh my gosh, I have to save the dugongs. What do you mean drug cartels kill animals?” cow? How can I help this?
Even Colossal's harshest critics recognize the potential of gene editing to save species caught in genetic bottlenecks. Many wildlife populations have become dangerously inbred as their numbers decline, and Colossal is working to reintroduce genetic diversity back into populations, such as the endangered red wolf in North America, by reintroducing lost genes from museum specimens.
But despite the hype and money surrounding Colossal, conservationists say its work can never replace traditional efforts to save species from extinction: the labor-intensive work of controlling predators, protecting ecosystems and restoring habitats.
“Species revival technology can be a useful tool for conserving living species,” Rawlens says, “but it is no substitute for unsexy hard work.”
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