"Ancient DNA is like if you put fresh DNA in a 500 degree oven overnight," Dr Rawlence told BBC News. "So what Colossal has produced is a grey wolf, but it has some dire wolf-like characteristics, like a larger skull and white fur," said Dr Rawlence. "A grey wolf is the closest living relative of a dire wolf - they're genetically really similar - so we targeted DNA sequences that lead to dire wolf traits and then edited grey wolf cells... then we cloned those cells and created our dire wolves." According to Dr Rawlence though, dire wolves diverged from grey wolves anywhere between 2.5 to six million years ago. "Colossal compared the genomes of the dire wolf and the grey wolf, and from about 19,000 genes, they determined that 20 changes in 14 genes gave them a dire wolf."
