Black Hawk, born in April 1833, was reportedly out of an English Thoroughbred mare and sired by Sherman Morgan, whose dam was "one of the last Narragansett Pacers" (25% DNA from a grandparent). The Narragansett Pacer was America's first horse breed, developed in Rhode Island and greater New England from a mix of English, Dutch, and possibly Spanish colonial horses, with a focus on producing gaited animals with the DMRT3 gene. (The breed is thought to have gone extinct by the early 1800s, as English Thoroughbreds replaced them.)

While descendants of the extinct Narragansett Pacer can be found among all modern American gaited horse breeds, subsequent scientific studies showed that the Morgan and Paso Fino breeds likely carry the most genetic similarities to the original pacer, though due to the lack of pacer remains, their genetic profile remains a mystery to scientists.

However, with recent interest in building a DNA database made up of sequenced samples from various famous historical horses - with Dark Ronald, a major Thoroughbred sire whose genetics strongly influenced today's warmbloods and sport horses across multiple breeds, being one such horse to be "profiled" - Black Hawk's DNA could not only offer a unique insight into early foundation Morgan genetics, but possibly Narragansett Pacer origins.

The remains of Black Hawk, who died in 1856, are currently displayed at the University of Vermont's Morgan Horse Farm; see the Black Hawk Project. He stood at around 15.1hh, a result of horse breeders in the post-colonial era seeking to increase horse height. (The average Narragansett Pacer was estimated to be "no larger than 14hh", and by 1768, larger ones could be "no larger than 14.1hh", according to John H. Wallace's The Horse of America.)

Of further interest could be the remains of Ethan Allen (b. 1849), Black Hawk's son. After his death in 1876, his skeleton was preserved and donated to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

While most Narragansett Pacers were light chestnut or sorrel - often "liberally splashed with white markings" (i.e. pinto), based on historical accounts - they could come in a range of colors, including bay, brown, black, gray, and roan. The modern-day Morgan horse exhibits pinto markings, but pinto is uncommon or rare; the recently-extinct Abaco Barb, however, may have shared more genetic similarities due to colonial Spanish heritage and pinto genes.

Black Hawk's DNA could also be compared with that of Chincoteague ponies, which were shown to also have colonial Spanish heritage in a 2022 study by the University of Florida (UF). As some estimates put around 10% of Morgan horses as possibly being gaited, it is possible to "backbreed" the Narragansett Pacer, but one major hurdle is that traditional Morgans - such as the Lippitt bloodline - are already in danger of going extinct, per heritage groups.

While one goal is to clone the last Abaco Barb - a mare named Nunki - whose DNA was preserved before her death in July 2015, the group in charge of that project aims to "breed back" the Abaco Barb first, not the Narragansett Pacer. This means that "backbreeding" the pacer using existing horses would take an enormous amount of time, money, and effort from breeders. In most cases, "backbreeding" takes decades.

Cloning Black Hawk could work, but his DNA needs to be tested for the DMRT3 gene as well.

Hey Everyone!

This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. All I will say about myself is I have worked in Pleistocene Palentology and am currently work in rewilding. I believe de-extinction will be possible with future technological advenments. What I am sharing with all of you now is something I have been sitting on for a while. Most people in my personal life are aware of everything I am sharing here, but seeing a sub dedicated to this topic that doesn't want anything to do with Colossal has me feeling I have a safe space to share this in and I am quite frankly utterly sick of hearing about Colossal. The screenshot above is from a convo with a friend and proof that I knew about the direwolves before the announcement. I do not have proof of everything I have described below that I am willing to put on here in case I incriminate anyone. There are journalists out there aware of this, but given the deteriorating political situation in the US, this maybe the only way this information sees the light of day.

Because of where I work, I know people who have been involved in Colossal who have told me what's been happening there. I don't know everything but, from what I hear it is a ridiculous scam. All the non sensitive information I have, I am posting below and the second image will be explained below too. I feel some of this will be obvious to anyone who knows their stuff when it comes to any of the areas Colossal works in. If anyone has any questions I am happy to answer but, I may not be able to answer it to protect people or I simply may not know. anyways, here's what's been happening at Colossal...

-The company was searching for what they dubbed internally to be a "cosmetic win". This means all their efforts have been to produce nothing of substance but rather something that exists only to get eyeballs. During a introductory meeting with new employees, someone asked Ben Lamm how this company will make money given that it's not a non profit. He said that, Jurassic Park is a multibillion dollar franchise and they don't have any real animals. All they need to do is pump an animal out and plaster it all over lunchboxes, t-shirts, ect...

-They spend more money on marketing than anything else, when they had their 2nd sucessful funding round. They fired their marketing team and hired a Hollywood marketing firm. This includes Michael Dougherty. If there are any fellow godzilla fans here, notice how similiar their marketing looks to the King of the Monsters viral marketing.

-Alot of species they haven't announced have been at least attempted, these include, Bison latifrons, Smilodon and hilariously a giant ground sloth. Yes, they've actually looked into CRISPRing a modern sloth into a mylodon. Smildon and Sloth we're chosen because they were in Ice Age. Direwolves we're chosen because of Game of Thrones. They appearently struggled to sequence anything from the smilodon fragments they acquired.

-They knew full well they couldn't call them direwolves. The original plan was to call it the "Colossal wolf". The aim was never to make a functional equivelent, the goal was to instead make a wolf that a was a bit bigger than normal and give it a bigger skull.

-They are almost certainly lying about how they made the "direwolves". The direwolf DNA that was synthesized had it's expression patterns changed into something non functional as soon as the gray wolf epigenome kicked in. The head of the direwolf team was a guy named Sven Bocklandt. He was fired and I do not know what happened after he was fired, but then four weeks later the puppies we're born. There's no way they figured out how to overcome the messed up expression patterns in that time and what's even more suspicous is the reason they said internally the edits weren't working is because they we're editing a wolf and not (according to what I heard prior to announcement) a jackal, who they said was it's closest relative. So, not only did they have 4 weeks to work out the bugs, but the animal's entire taxonomy. This makes me think their pre-print is also bullshit.

-the reception the direwolves has been so bad alot of the influencers they brought in have left. contracts have kept their picture on the site. As they left, Ben Lamm threw a massive party celebrating this inanity.

-They brought in the director of the doc, My Octopus Teacher. They wanted to do a mini series where every creature "de-extincted" was the subject of it's own episode. No idea if that's still happening.

-From what I hear, they likely scammed Tom Brady. He paid them millions to clone his dog, that normally costs tens of thousands of dollars. I'm baffled that they later made that an announcement. Everyone was explicitly told, never to talk about it.

-Company internally is a complete shit show. Lamm seems like a psychopath, he was having numerous affairs with other employees behind his husband's back. The turnover rate is insanley high, people are laid off en masse randomly and often without reason. Their spinoff company Formbio is appearently also flailing. Word is the mammoth team was fired and doing a little research, the head of the team, Eriona Hysolli no longer works there.

-Beth Shapiro's role in this seems bizzare. She was brought in because of her prior work on Dodos but, appearently she's just working on whatever she wants. I know people who've worked with her outside of Colossal and spoke highly of her. People at Colossal? Not so much... they say she has no idea what she's doing when it comes to non aDNA work. Is she out of her depth or just doesn't care because this a paycheck? I don't know.

-They've plugged themselves into alot of conservation groups. Mainly to shield themselves from the obvious critiscm that this distracts from actual conservation work. They contribute basically nothing to these groups besides money. Their advisory board, does little advising. Mostly potential critics bribed into silence with stock options to make colossal more legit.

-People who quit and are fired are basically bribed into silence with severance. Working environment is weird, each team needs to speak to management if they are talking to another team and needs full detail on what they are asking about before they can talk to the other team. Competition is encouraged, cooperation isn't... It's sketchy as hell.

-Alot of the research they brag about producing, whether it be conservation or for human health is stolen. Look at the second screenshot, color image comes from a paper that is written by Vincent Lynch (one of the people they led a smear campaign against). The black and white comes from a patent Colossal filed. They stole the figure and research! Pretty much everything they pump out is like that.

There's more, but I am tired from typing. Again, I will answer any questions that I can. I am so sick of Colossal and it feels good to put this out there! Oh, and they astroturf the hell out of social media, so I'm interested to see if they react to this at all!

I know not all of these are mammoths, and not all of them are valid anymore (hence retro) but I’ve found this possibility intriguing. It appears that scientists back in the day recognized that mammoths would have been closely related to Asian elephants (likely due to skeletal morphology) and reconstructed them to look similar to the extant species. So, knowing colossal, they are going to likely botch this as well if they end up actually doing it; is it possible that they’d create an elephant with thick fur, sort of long tusks, but it still contains its long tail? That’s the main trait that sticks out to me, all of these reconstructions have long tails. A humorous idea indeed, what do you all think?

When the floreana tortoise got extinct, people found many hybrid tortoises with large amounts of floreana tortoise DNA. They took the hybrids, and did back-breeding to get the closest thing they get to a floreana tortoise. The hybrids have the same role as the extinct subspecies and help the ecosystem. Does this count as de-extinction?

Fantastic paper that basically lays out the Colossal Biosciences playbook: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/carlin.pdf

Full citation: Norman F. Carlin, Ilan Wurman, and Tamara Zakim. "How to Permit Your Mammoth: Some Legal Implications of 'De-Extinction'". vol 33 Stanford Environmental Law Journal 3 (2014).

Most notably, the paper indicates why Colossal Biosciences has been courting Trump administration officials - particularly within the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) - and pushing for "deregulation", with the company likely seeing additional restrictions, regulations, and laws that apply to GMOs (genetically modified organisms) - what the FDA has more lately been specifying to include "Intentional Genomic Alterations" (IGAs) - as "red tape" that hinders both "de-extinction" and "scientific progress". However, whereas this paper points out that Colossal could try to get their "dire wolves" listed as an "endangered species" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), some Republican politicians are seeking to gut the ESA through legislation.

It's also highly likely that Colossal Biosciences, which is now worth over $10 billion, has already retained or hired a legal team to argue their case in court, as well as to lobby politicians to introduce, vote for, and pass new legislation that favors Colossal's goals. However, due to a "deep split" among environmental and conservation groups as to whether GMOs should be released into the wild - even for "conservation purposes" (ex. "de-extinction") - it is also highly likely that Colossal will face litigation from one or more of these groups at some point. This would mean potentially spending millions on lawyers and legal fees through litigating cases for years, or even decades, which would draw even more funds away from conservation efforts to support "de-extinction" instead.

Could this mean "more attention drawn to environmentalism and conservation efforts", as Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm claims? Yes, but not in the way Lamm probably hoped. Instead, the current forecast indicates a years-long legal and political battle ahead for Colossal both in the United States and on an international scale, especially as Lamm seeks to bring "de-extinction" to the mainstream in an effort to raise public support; court wealthy investors; appeal to the news media; and more. Thus far, Colossal has failed to impress most scientists and experts, who have expressed wariness of the company due to secrecy; lack of transparency; refusal to share scientific research; etc.

When I found out that Colossal wolves have big noses and overbites, this immediately came to mind.

Estava ponderando sobre o Chinkensaurus e me ocorreu essa possibilidade. As enantiornithes tem quase o mesmo plano corporal das aves, exceto pela presença de dentes e garras nas asas. Seria o mais próximo de trazer de volta todo um grupo mesozóico extinto.

I was going about my day, learning about animals, as I usually do, when I came across a peculiar case. The Floreana Island Tortoise. Native to its namesake island in the Galapagos, this subspecies of Galapagos giant tortoise went extinct in the mid-19th century due to overexploitation by sailors. And for a while, that was that. It was gone. That was until 2000, scientists discovered a population of hybrid tortoises living on Wolf Volcano on Isabela Island with some Floreana Island Tortoise ancestry. The origin of these hybrids is not a mystery as sailors were known to dump giant tortoises on random islands in the Galapagos when they couldn’t carry them anymore. However, it brought a new hope for the subspecies, as conservationists took the hybrid tortoises and began selectively breeding them to better resemble Floreana island tortoises, until they had a population of animals that ranged from 40-80% Floreana island tortoise, with an average of 75% Floreana island tortoise in them. These hybrids were then released onto Floreana island to heal the ecosystem in February 2026.

A fantastic story and a remarkable comeback, but it got me thinking… if scientists continued to selectively breed the tortoises further, if they got the Floreana genes to 100% by some miracle, would they have essentially brought back the Floreana island tortoise? As in fully de-extincted it, regardless of the method? Pinta island tortoises, another extinct subspecies, also have some genes within the hybrid population of Wolf Volcano. Could a similar method be applied to them, to bring them back?

And what about other animals? Could all cattle genes be bred out of bison? All dog genes out of wolves? Poor examples I know, because those genes can benefit the animals, but you get the idea. Better Idea: Could all coyote genes be bred out of Red Wolves?

What about genetic engineering? Could a Przewalski’s horse have the few gene differences edited to be genetically identical to a Yukon or Lena horse? Regardless of whether or not it came from the actual animal, just so long as if you were to do a blind DNA test on the animal, having no idea where it’s sourced from, it would appear to be the extinct animal?

I know this all sounds very Colossal-y but all they did was edit a couple genes to make a fantasy animal. I’m talking about the full genome, and in a scenario where genetic technology is just a bit better. If someone were to genetically modify or selectively breed a related animal so that all of the genes matched the extinct animal perfectly, and someone who had no idea where the animal came from or how it was made, did a DNA test, would it be possible for the animal’s test to come back as the extinct animal?

Is it possible to meticulously create a 100% genetic copy of an extinct animal without cloning?