In a secret location in the United States, two white wolves are lounging in the grass in a sunny, roughly one-acre enclosure. It’s early spring and a chill wind blows through bare trees nearby. The humans in the enclosure are wearing their winter jackets. With their thick, shaggy fur, the 5-month-old wolves are better adapted to the cold.
One of the humans is Ben Lamm, founder and CEO of Dallas-based startup Colossal Biosciences. He has invited WIRED to be among the first to see the wolves. The animals, he says, are dire wolves, which went extinct more than 10,000 years ago. A large canine species that once roamed the Americas,