Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin meets genetically engineered dire wolf pups

In the high fantasy novel series A Song Of Ice And Fire (1996 to present), later adapted into the worldwide TV phenomenon Game Of Thrones (2011 to 2019), the once-extinct and majestic dire wolf features in the story as the pets of the Stark family.

So, it is only fitting that the franchise’s author George R.R. Martin got to meet the first dire wolves, or the animals closest to it, to exist in more than 10,000 years.

Dallas-based biotech company Colossal announced on April 7 the birth of three pups – named Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi – bearing the DNA signatures of long-extinct dire wolves using genetic engineering.

The news was kept hush-hush prior to the announcement, with only a few select individuals, including Martin, in the know.

The 76-year-old American writer posted a picture of himself holding one of the pups and wrote in a post on his blog on April 8: “I’ve been holding my tongue for months now, sworn to silence yet dying to tell the world. Pardon my shouting, but... the dire wolf is back.”

He said New Zealand film-maker Peter Jackson (The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, 2001 to 2003) had called him up with the “mysterious suggestion” that Martin get in touch with American billionaire entrepreneur and chief executive of Colossal, Mr Ben Lamm. Martin said Jackson had sworn not to spill the secret to him, but the excitement in his voice prompted Martin to reach out to Mr Lamm.

Martin added he met Mr Lamm, co-founder George Church and chief science officer Beth Shapiro in February.

He wrote: “And I met Romulus and Remus too. Here’s me and Romulus. (Or maybe Remus. They’re twins, and hard to tell apart.)”

In A Song Of Ice And Fire, the dire wolf is the sigil of House Stark, a noble family in Martin’s fantastical epic about various noble families vying to rule the kingdom of Westeros. An early scene sees the Stark children, who go on to be protagonists in the novel, finding dire wolf pups in the snow – a scene that Martin said inspired the entire series.

He explained in his post: “Dire wolves are special to me. Why? Damned if I know. As a kid, I was not allowed to have a dog, let alone a wolf. But I visited the (fossil site and museum) La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles a few decades back, and when I saw their dire wolf exhibit, four hundred skulls arrayed on a wall, something stirred inside me.

“Most of my readers will have heard the story of how I began writing a science-fiction novel in the summer of 1991 when a scene came to me, the first chapter of Game Of Thrones where they find the dire wolf pups in the summer snows. Where did that come from? Why did it seize me so powerfully? I have no idea. But it grabbed hold of me so hard that I put the other novel aside and began to write A Song Of Ice And Fire. The dire wolves were a huge part of it. Without them, Westeros might not exist.”

The celebrated author then looked forward to future news of de-extinction with the help of genetic engineering.

“Still to come, the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and… yes... the dodo.”