“It’s not a dire wolf.” — Vincent Lynch, 24 tweets later, still coping.
In June 2025, Colossal Biosciences made headlines with its announcement of a breakthrough: using ancient DNA to bring back the dire wolf, or at least, a close genetic proxy. The science was bold. The branding was splashy. And one scientist, Vincent Lynch, did not take it well.
What began as a fair critique quickly spiraled into something else entirely: a weeks-long social media fixation marked by sarcastic memes, recycled tweets, and a seemingly endless insistence on one phrase: “It’s not a dire wolf.”
Let’s unpack what’s going on.
The Refrain: “It’s Not a Dire Wolf”
Lynch’s response to Colossal’s announcement began predictably enough—with skepticism. He posted a phylogenetic tree showing that dire wolves are genetically distinct from modern canines, suggesting Colossal’s approach was scientifically misleading. Fair enough.
However, he then reposted the same chart again. And again. And again.
Across more than 20 tweets, Lynch repeated the same point, sometimes verbatim, often accompanied by the same image or slightly reworded captions. He quoted himself, retweeted himself, and layered in increasingly snarky memes.
At one point, he tweeted a Jerry Seinfeld gif. Another time, he posted a screen grab of Colossal’s visual branding with a dismissive caption. The science became secondary to the performance.
A Timeline of Tweets, or: The Making of a Meltdown
- June 25: Colossal announces its dire wolf project.
- June 26: Lynch posts the now-familiar phylogenetic chart and declares: “It’s not a dire wolf.”
- June 28: Same chart, same caption.
- July 1: Enters meme phase.
- July 3: Repeats earlier tweets nearly word-for-word.
- July 5: Subtweets journalists covering the announcement: “Please stop writing this like it’s resurrection.”
By this point, followers were either muting him or egging him on.
Science or Spectacle?
Here’s the real question: Is Lynch engaging in scientific discourse, or is this just performative outrage?
Notably absent from his timeline:
- Any deep engagement with the methods Colossal published.
- A formal rebuttal, blog post, or academic response.
- Nuanced discussion of the difference between “genetic restoration” and “cloning.”
Instead, there’s an overwhelming reliance on mockery, repetition, and meme culture, with less peer review and more performance art.
A Missed Opportunity
Criticism of ambitious biotech projects is not only valid, it’s essential. But Lynch’s approach veers away from rigor and into redundancy. For weeks, he has made the same point without elaborating on it, offering no new insight or meaningful alternative.
Colossal, for its part, has clarified that its work aims to recreate ecological function through genetic proxies, rather than resurrecting species with 100% original genomes. That nuance matters. Lynch, however, appears to be more focused on volume than precision.
Final Thought: When Twitter Becomes the Medium and the Message
Vincent Lynch may have a point about the use of scientific language in public communication. Still, by turning his feed into a loop of memes and recycled content, he has diluted that message into background noise.
