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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Patrick Greenfield

INSANE: They didn t de extinct anything can colossal s genetically engineered animals ever be the real thing | Vintage Vibes

A bearded man holding a white wolf cub, with a the curved tusks of a mammoth model behind him and illustrations of a giant bird in a New Zealand-type jungle and a dodo
Ben Lamm, founder of Colossal Biosciences, holding a ‘dire wolf’ cub in front of illustrations of three other extinct animals he hopes to revive: the giant moa, the dodo and the woolly mammoth. Illustration: Joe Plimmer/Guardian pictures/Colossal

Death and taxes are supposed to be the things we can depend on in this life. But in 2025, the American entrepreneur Ben Lamm sold much of the world on the idea that death did not, after all, need to be for ever.

This was the year the billionaire’s genetics startup, Colossal Biosciences, claimed it had resurrected the dire wolf, an animal that disappeared at the end of the last ice age, by tweaking the DNA of grey wolves. According to the company, it had also edged closer to bringing the woolly mammoth back from the dead, with the creation of genetically engineered “woolly mice”.

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