"De-extinction" is a Fool's Errand

To breathless media coverage, a company called Colossal Biosciences now claims to have produced three genetically engineered pups of the long-extinct dire wolf. Scientific criticism followed fast.

The company’s press release claimed the pups to be “the world’s first de-extinct animals … brought back from extinction using genetic edits derived from a complete dire wolf genome, meticulously reconstructed by Colossal from ancient DNA.”

Experts in paleogenetics pointed out that only 14 genes, with 20 differences between living gray wolves and extinct dire wolves, were involved in the “edits.” Pont...