This Gene-Tech Is More Impressive Than the Extinct Dire Wolves It Created. Here’s Why

Researchers with Colossal Biosciences, the private biotechnology and genetic engineering firm, are winners of the 2026 Gizmodo Science Fair for developing an integrated pipeline capable of robust genomic reconstruction, gene-editing, and synthetic embryo maturation.

You might recall the fruits of this effort, the birth of three “dire wolf” pups via surrogate dogs in 2025—which leveraged some (but not all) of the ancient wolves’ genetic code, which this team painstakingly recovered from fossilized remains of the North American dire wolf (Aenocyon…