LIFE AFTER DEATH

Has Colossal, a genetics startup, resurrected the ancient dire wolf?

- D. T. MAX

Extinction is a part of nature. Of the five billion species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 per cent have vanished. The Late Devonian extinction, nearly four hundred million years ago, annihilated the jawless fish. The Triassic-Jurassic extinction, two hundred million years ago, finished off the crocodile-like phytosaur. Sixty-six million years ago, the end-Cretaceous extinction eliminated the Tyrannosaurus rex and the velociraptor; rapid climate change from an asteroid impact was the likely cause. The Neanderthals disappeared some forty thousand years ago.

One day whether from climate change, another asteroid, nuclear war, or something we can't yet imagine-humans will probably be wiped out, too.

The difference with humans is that we've been taking a huge number of species down with us. Starting about three hundred thousand years ago, we learned to hunt with spears and in groups gave us significant agency in deciding which animals would disappear first-we chose them either because they wanted to eat us or because we wanted to eat them.

The animals' demise, though, helped doom large predators that hunted our preferred prey. Among the casualties were sabretoothed cats and dire wolves. Along the way, various other species also breathed their last: woolly mammoths, Irish elk, dodos, carrier pigeons, Steller's sea cows, great auks, thylacines (Tasmanian tigers).

The carnage continues. Last year, the slender-billed curlew, a bird that once ranged over much of Europe and Asia, was declared gone. And there are only two northern white rhinos left-both females.