Washington, DC — Somewhere deep in a 2,000-acre wooded preserve, three pups move through the underbrush — low, silent, deliberate. Their coats are dense, thick. Their eyes flick yellow in the light. They are calm, almost unnervingly so. These are no ordinary wolves.

They are the first dire wolves the world has seen in 13,000 years.

Romulus. Remus. And Khaleesi — named after the Game of Thrones queen, a nod to myth and fantasy, now made flesh.

Biotech firm Colossal Biosciences has done what once belonged to fiction. It has brought back an Ice Age predator.

"We took DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies," said Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Colossal, a Dallas-based startup whose ambitions have included resurrecting the woolly mammoth.

"It was once said, 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' Today, our team gets to unveil some of the magic they are working on and its broader impact on conservation."

This isn't a gimmick. And it isn't Jurassic Park. What Colossal has done marks the first successful de-extinction of a species — or close to it — using ancient DNA and modern genomics.

The dire wolf, feared apex predator of the Pleistocene epoch, use to roam a broad geographical stretch from modern-day Venezuela to Canada.

US scientists have now revived the predator through a genetic process so complex it treads the line between science and sorcery.

Fantasy touched by genome

The pups are not 100 percent dire wolf. But with 20 specific edits to 14 genes, made in gray wolves — their closest living relative — the result is striking.

"Their coat is just absolutely amazing. It's super thick. They are super friendly because we've raised them," said Lamm.

"Matt (James), our chief animal officer, bottle-fed them when they were just young pups. But they're starting to come into their own, where they’re acting more and more like wolves."

And they're healthy. Born of surrogate domestic dogs. Fed by hand. Raised under surveillance. Living, breathing proof of the power of synthetic biology to reach into the ancient past — and pull something back.

Romulus and Remus were born last fall. Khaleesi followed in January 2025. Together, they roam the preserve, watched by drone and monitored for behaviour, health, instincts.

One of them — Remus — has appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

It's an eerie feeling. Like memory with muscle. Ghosts with weight.

The project was shaped not just by science, but by a convergence of conservation, culture, and Indigenous wisdom.

"We could do something that could bring awareness from pop culture to science," said Lamm, “and do something that the Indigenous people were really excited about. We kind of joke that we didn’t pursue the dire wolf — in a weird way, it pursued us."

Colossal was in conversation with the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation of North Dakota — known collectively as the MHA Nation — when the idea began to take root. It was there that the company heard about the dire wolf’s spiritual and ecological significance.

"The dire wolf is a symbol that carries the echoes of our ancestors, their wisdom, and their connection to the wild," said MHA Nation's Tribal Chairman, Mark Fox.

"Its presence would remind us of our responsibility as stewards of the Earth — to protect not just the wolf, but the delicate balance of life itself."

The project's impact may stretch beyond de-extinction. In the process of creating the dire wolf, Colossal scientists discovered a technique that could help save the critically endangered red wolf, allowing clones to be created from blood samples instead of full tissue.

Ancient bones, modern code

That could change the future of conservation for endangered canids.

"Colossal produced healthy puppies with genetic variants that haven’t existed for over 10,000 years," said Elinor Karlsson, a geneticist with the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and an advisor to the company.

"Their work could help us preserve genetic diversity that is on the brink of disappearing from Earth today."

Still, the project raises the inevitable questions. Ethics. Ecology. Responsibility.

Beth Shapiro, a leading biologist and Colossal's chief science officer, noted: "We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about whether we should bring back a species. We weren’t just focused on whether we could. We’ve now proven we can."

And then, of course, there’s the cultural weight of the dire wolf — a creature more widely known through fantasy than fossil. George R. R. Martin, creator of Game of Thrones, is both an investor and creative advisor to the project.

"I get the luxury to write about magic," Martin said in a statement. "But Ben and Colossal have created magic by bringing these majestic beasts back to our world."

That world is not the same as the one the dire wolf once ruled. The mammoths are gone. The forests have thinned. Climate change shadows every ecological decision.

But in the wooded wilds of North America, Romulus and his siblings are now part of something that spans time — part myth, part memory, part future.

The dire wolf is no longer just a symbol. It lives.

And the wild, perhaps, is listening.