American biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences on Monday announced that it brought back a formerly extinct species called dire wolf through what it described as the “world’s first de-extinction process”.

In a post on X, the company introduced two of the three wolves named Romulus and Remus. It stated, “Reborn on October 1, 2024, these remarkable pups were brought back to life using ancient DNA extracted from fossilised remains.”

The company stated in another post, “The dire wolf has been extinct for over 10,000 years. These two wolves were brought back from extinction using genetic edits derived from a complete dire wolf genome, meticulously reconstructed by Colossal from ancient DNA found in fossils dating back 11,500 and 72,000 years.”

Colossal’s chief scientist Beth Shapiro told ABC News, “I had all the confidence that this was going to work.”

He explained that the company used a grey wolf genome which was “already genetically 99.5 per cent identical to dire wolves”.

“And we’ve edited those cells at multiple places in its DNA sequence to contain the dire wolf version of the DNA,” he added.

On the other hand, some experts remained skeptical of the announcement. ABC News quoted a researcher Julie Meachen as saying, “I don’t think they are actually dire wolves. What we had is something new — we have a mostly grey wolf that looks like a dire wolf.”

According to Colossal’s website, dire wolves have a distinct genetic lineage despite being visually similar to grey wolves and jackals.

With genetic engineering and preserved DNA, the scientists at Colossal deciphered the dire wolf genome, rewrote the genetic code of the common grey wolf to match it, and brought Romulus, Remus, and two-month-old Khaleesi, into the world using domestic dogs as surrogate mothers, Time reported.

The three dire wolves reside at an undisclosed location enclosed by large “zoo-grade” fencing, where they were being monitored by security officials, drones and live camera feeds, according to CNN.