For over 200,000 years, dire wolves have roamed across North America, stretching from Canada all the way the Chile. They were a part of ancient "megafauna" hunters, along with the infamous sabre-toothed tiger/Smilodon, cave bears and american lions, which all went extinct around 25,000 to 13,000 years ago. Dire wolves were pack hunters and their diets usually consisted of large fauna including giant sloths, horses, bison and sometimes even mastodons and camels. Dire wolves are known as the largest wolves that have ever lived standing at 3.5 - 4 feet tall and weighing 150 - 180 pounds along with having much more robust skulls and teeth to accommodate for their their prey. Dire Wolves were originally thought to have descended from modern day gray wolves but recent studies have shown that dire wolves actually descended from a family more closely related to African dogs, jackals and dholes.
Colossal biosciences has claimed to bring back the dire wolves from extinction, but that is still up for debate. While Colossal has claimed to bring them back, many argue that they have not truly brought dire wolves back because the pups were created using genetic editing technology known as CRISPR. This technology allows scienteists to precisely edit gene sequences in living things, which is the technology that Colossal used to bring back the so called dire wolves. Many argue that because these wolves are just the product of a gray wolf gene that was edited to be identical to a dire wolf, doesn't make them dire wolves, it makes them altered gray wolves, others argue that the fact that the embryos were carried by a gray wolf mother, also, does not make them true dire wolves. In the end, both of these ideas are true to an extent, but also false, you can say they are gray wolf hybrids because the base gene that was used was originally a gray wolf gene, the problem is that even if the base gene was from a gray wolf, it is still identical to a dire wolf.
There are many concersn that have arisen around the de-extinction of dire wolves, or even the de-extinction of any species now. Many bring up the ethical problems of bringing these animals back because even if we can bring them back, there's a very real possibility that we could never be able to release them into the wild, they haven't adapted to the current world or ecosystem, they could become an invasive species, they could destroy entire ecosystems if they were released into the wild so many have argued that it isn't ethical to bring them back just to be held in captivity for as long as they exist or just to be a show for people to come and see. It is not ethical to bring these animals back to ultimately, just to be for them to be used for profit or for business.
Should we continue bringing back extinct species if possible?
Do you think its a good idea to release extinct species into the wild?
If you could choose one extinct species to return, what would it be?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/dire-wolf-deextinction-colossal-paleontology
Replies
This is a great topic and your summary is very well done. The issue is you posted it last night(four days late) which didn't give students much time to reply. There were two comments which you did not reply to. Replying is worth 30 points.
No, I don't think we should bring back excint animals. A lot of them were very dangerouse. I think that we should not realse them into the wild, because there is so many things they would have to adapt to. Also there gonna throw off all the other animals and aslo throw off the food chain. Also a lot of them have been gone for many decades so I don't think there is a reason to really bring them back. I would bring back the Dodo bird becase they look funny and they are not very dangerouse.
I don't think it is a good idea to release extint species into the wild. It would be hard for these animals to adapt to the current world and their new ecosystems. I think it could lead to bigger problems with our current aninmals. I also think that this is unethical because these animals have been gone for many decades, and I don't see why it is necessary to bring them back.