Several years ago I saw a documentary on the now-extinct Tasmanian Wolf. I wasn't able to find a good site profile for the wolf but most of you should know what the Tasmanian Wolf is. They've been extinct for some seventy years.

From the documentary, I remember that they're trying to bring the wolf back through advanced genetic engineering. That'd be nice if we were able to bring back extinct creatures since most wolves perished because of over-hunting. And the Tasmanian Wolf reminds me of the few Red Wolves, who are quite close to extinction, since the Red Wolf is about the only wolf that I know of that is not a sub-speices that still lives.

Anyway, I thought these long lost wolves deserved a thread of their own. What do you all think of the Tasmanian Wolf bringing (literally) brought back to life?

I think I've heard a thing or two about this wolf. Shame that one of the few different speices of the wolves was placed on the list of extinct creatures because of human involvement.

It'd be pretty cool if these wolves were brought back from the dead. They'd probably survive and flourish like the Grey Wolves did when they were placed on the endangered list in the States.

If I have understanded correctly, Tasmanian wolf aka Tasmanian tiger isn't even a canid at all. It belongs to Infraclass Marsupialia, like kangaroos and koalas.

It's correct that the Tasmanian wolf wasn't a canid.

I think that cloning it, even if possible, wouldn't be a good use of scientific resources. If I understand correctly, there's only one well-preserved specimen anyway, but even if they could clone from a dozen different specimens, the amount of genetic diversity would still be appallingly low. Then you have issues in how they are raised, severe animal welfare issues, all sorts of problems. There is no good reason to clone existing rare species like pandas, either, but that's a different issue.

Red wolves and coyotes are the only species of "wolf" apart from the grey wolf in North America, but some scientists think that there are at least two more species in southern Asia And there is the Ethiopian wolf, too, plus the three species of jackal which aren't all that far away genetically in the grand scheme of things.

Would the Dire Wolf be apart from the Grey Wolf speices? Even though they've been extinct for how many thousands of years. . .

That's a good question. I'd guess they're far enough removed to be considered a different species. (I'm no expert, though.)

Today's Gray Wolves are pretty darn big for a canid already. Dire Wolf is supposed to be even bigger that that. That would be pretty intimidating to come face to face with. Big doggie. Uh, n-nice big doggie...

bringing something back to life... That does not seem possible. I do not think it would be a very good idea anyway, the world has changed a lot in the past seventy or so years.