By nature we are a species of storytellers. From mythology to scientific models of reality we seek narratives and perhaps nowhere this desire is more clearly expressed than in our attempts to resurrect the dead. But science, unlike mythology, is bound by the constraints of natural law and biological decay.
All this excitement in the news about the resurrection of direwolf recently is as fascinating as mythological stories we want to hear again and again. But it is best to view these claims with maximum skepticism. Inconveniently for these claims, half-life of bone DNA is approximately 521 years, after this period, DNA degrades to the point where it becomes unsuitable for any genetic processes let alone cloning.
Using 13,000 years old bones and teeth to reconstruct a genome is like a deleted file corrupted beyond repair but you recover it anyways with a lot of guesswork and filling the blanks, but in the end, it’s still not truly usable.
Add to that the principle about it being too good to be true… The Pyrenean ibex, which was cloned just three years after the species went extinct, lasted a grand total of seven minutes. Dogs, cows, even mice, their clones often suffer deformities or fatal complications within days or weeks. And then seeing these photogenic pups running around and socially interacting in the clips is no short than a miracle. More like Game of thrones than the ice age.
Experts like Rawlence from University of Otago and Jeremy Austin from the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, have pointed out, in essence, that these clones are essentially modified gray wolves. And the reality is that we are light-years away from being able to recover usable dire wolf DNA.
Despite the widespread skepticism from experts. Mainstream media’s need for sensationalism, as this direwolf spectacle reveals, is deeply unsettling. But this becomes clear when you follow the money. The overwhelming majority of the funding of Colossal, it turns out, does not come from the scientific community, but from strategic investors, venture capitalists and enthusiasts.
And that is why one minute it’s woolly mammoths roaming the plains, the next it’s direwolves back from the dead… stories, in other words, that keep the money flowing.
