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I am sure everyone has heard by now about dire wolves being "resurrected" so to speak. The debate rages on about whether these are real dire wolves or just products of genetic engineering. My response to that argument is, if the genetics match, they are the same species. In all species, it is the genes that tell the ultimate truth.
Another issue being debated is whether or not we are "playing God" by resurrecting extinct species.
I say we are not. We are simply trying to fix the mistakes we have made as a species by driving other species to extinction. Take for example the Dodo bird, which is also in the process of being resurrected.
Now, while we did not directly hunt dire wolves to extinction, we DID hunt their primary prey to extinction which of course lead to their eventual demise as a species.
I say we are finally growing up as a species, and starting to take responsibility for the actions of not only ourselves, but our ancient ancestors. This gives me hope.
Thoughts?
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ā” jovi š¹
1) theyre not direwolves. direwolves were not wolves. you cant make a direwolf by putting some direwolf dna into a wolf. what they made are just wolves 2) why should we spend all this time and money trying to resurrect an extinct species when we could be putting that energy into saving animals that are in danger of extinction now?
"After sequencing five genomes from dire wolf fossils between 50,000 and 13,000 years old, the researchers found that the animals belonged to a much older lineage of dogs. Dire wolves, it now appeared, had evolved in the Americas and had no close kinship with the gray wolves from Eurasia; the last time gray wolves and dire wolves shared a common ancestor was about 5.7 million years ago. The strong resemblance between the two, the researchers say, is a case of convergent evolution, whereby different species develop similar adaptationsāor even appearancesāthanks to a similar way of life. Sometimes such convergence is only rough, such as both birds and bats evolving wings despite their differing anatomy. In the case of dire and gray wolves, lives of chasing large herbivores to catch some meat on the hoof resulted in two different canid lineages independently producing wolflike forms."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dire-wolves-were-not-really-wolves-new-genetic-clues-reveal/