It recently announced the birth of pups with key traits of dire wolves, an iconic predator last seen roaming North America more than 10,000 years ago. This followed on the heels of earlier project announcements focused on the woolly mammoth and the thylacine. This all fuels a sense that de-extinction is not only possible but imminent.
But
as the science advances, a deeper question lingers: how close must the
result be to count as a true return? If we can only recover fragments of
an extinct creature’s genome – and must build the rest with modern
substitutes – is that really de-extinction, or are we simply creating
lookalikes?...<<<Read More>>>...
