>>82270461
I'm just gonna get this in before calling it a night.
> is it something like one of those breeding projects that tries to visually recreate an extinct species?
Not exactly. They found two stable dna samples of dire wolves and isolated what genes make a dire wolf different from other Canidae species. Based off this research they found that grey and red wolves had several points of interbreeding throughout their lineage. They chose the grey wolf as a base due to more available research. Then they invented a multi editing crisper technology to edit multiple genes in one poke.
From here they could insert enough genes to change grey wolf dna into dire wolf dna. However some genes, like the white coat, were heavily associated with albinism and deafness in wolves, so they choose to just make the coat white by altering safer genes rather than what was fossilized.
Then they cloned the newly created wolf. Put the egg in a surrogate dog. And produced either a de extinct dire wolf or a super big white wolf depending on who you ask. Either way, there are now three genetically engineered extra large wolves in the world.
Along with 4 genetically engineered and diverse red wolves to save the current dying population of red wolves.