#2338 - Beth Shapiro

Beth Shapiro introduces herself as an evolutionary molecular biologist specializing in ancient DNA, or paleogenomics: extracting DNA from bones and other old material to revise human and environmental history. She recently left academia to become chief science officer at Colossal, the company behind the newly created dire wolves. She says her tendency to argue comes from defending how science should be practiced, not from enjoying personal conflict. Shapiro and Rogan attribute much academic hostility to scarcity: researchers fear that another person’s funding or publicity reduces their own chances. They also criticize gatekeeping by experts who treat disagreement as proof that others are simply wrong.

Shapiro says she originally expected to work in broadcast journalism. As a high-school student in Rome, Georgia, she operated cameras, wrote copy, read a teleprompter, and appeared on local television; at the University of Georgia she became a radio station news director, a job incompatible with freshman sleep schedules and late nights. A nine-week field geology and archaeology course changed her direction. Traveling across North America, sleeping in national parks, and studying geological and human history made her want to tell the story of how people repeatedly transformed landscapes. She chose science partly because she already understood communication and wanted to combine both careers.

In the late 1990s, Shapiro met Alan Cooper, one of the few scientists operating a purpose-built clean room for extracting DNA from bones. Ancient DNA is fragmented, contaminated by microbes and previous handlers, and easily overwhelmed by modern human DNA from a breath, touch, or eyelash. PCR—polymerase chain reaction—made the field practical by copying tiny fragments enough times to sequence them. The first supposed dinosaur DNA reports were contamination: sequences matched a chicken, and investigators discovered the excavation team had eaten fried chicken around the fossils. Shapiro describes modern ancient-DNA labs as resembling virus labs, except the researchers are protecting samples from themselves rather than protecting themselves from the samples.

Shapiro recounts fieldwork in Siberia, where infrastructure repeatedly failed. An MI8 helicopter took several attempts to start, carried researchers sitting on fuel tanks, and had Russian and French leaders smoking during the flight. The crew even picked up an unrelated French family before reaching a camp that turned out to sit on land glaciated during the last Ice Age, making its mammoth-bone prospects poor. Mosquitoes were so dense that researchers wore head nets and once killed about 35 in a single clap. Arctic mosquitoes can reproduce without a blood meal, though blood improves reproduction. The expedition survived on fish, rice, occasional birds, and diluted medical ethanol.

At the Siberian camp, three armed visitors appeared unexpectedly. They were Dolgon subsistence people who had seen the helicopter and traveled across the tundra to investigate. The expedition took them back to their community, where families lived in small movable structures, herded and rode reindeer, and endured winters reaching 40 below with months of darkness. Their belongings traveled on reindeer-drawn sleds. The researchers shared cheese supplied by a French couple—a large Gouda and another large cheese—after the Dolgon visitors were disappointed that the expedition had no alcohol left. Shapiro says the community is also trying to recover native languages suppressed during the Communist period, when Russian was imposed.

Shapiro explains that ancient-DNA researchers are often asked when dinosaurs will return, although dinosaur DNA has not survived. The field’s landmark achievement was sequencing Neanderthal genomes from bones; her husband helped assemble the first genome, and Svante Pääbo later won a Nobel Prize for related work. Denisovan DNA came from a tiny finger bone and revealed a previously unknown human group. By contrast, DNA from the hot-climate Flores “hobbit” remains has not been recovered. Shapiro says the surviving people of Flores are small through the combined effects of ordinary size-associated variants and island population history, not because they carry a single special “smallness” mutation.

Rogan and Shapiro discuss how species categories are human tools rather than rules recognized by nature. Polar and brown bears repeatedly hybridized when their ranges overlapped, and modern North American brown bears retain ancestry from those encounters. Hybrids generally lived like brown bears because they lacked polar bears’ white camouflage for seal hunting. Humans and Neanderthals also interbred: people today carry roughly 2–5% Neanderthal DNA, and combining everyone’s surviving fragments could reconstruct about 93% of the Neanderthal genome. Shapiro says fewer than 100 mutations may distinguish modern humans from Neanderthals in ways that matter to our identity, though the exact meaning of “species” depends on the scientific question.

Shapiro says Colossal used genomes from dire-wolf specimens that lived about 72,000 and 13,000 years ago to identify traits associated with the extinct animal, then edited gray-wolf cells to produce Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. They are larger and more muscular than gray wolves and have a light coat supported by pigmentation variants found in both sequenced dire wolves. She acknowledges the color could have varied, but says its recurrence across time and geography suggests it was common. The animals will remain on a secure ecological reserve, separated or hormonally controlled so they do not breed; cameras and three fencing layers monitor them continuously.

Shapiro argues that Colossal’s genetic tools are intended partly for conservation, including genetic rescue of red wolves. Introducing Texas panthers to Florida in the 1990s restored genetic diversity and reduced problems such as undescended testes and heart defects caused by inbreeding. She contrasts that with disastrous attempts to control invasive species: rosy wolf snails introduced in Hawaii to eat giant African land snails instead consumed native snails. Rogan mentions a proposed honey-badger solution for Florida’s Burmese-python problem, which they reject as another likely ecological mistake. Shapiro also recounts an early-20th-century proposal to import hippos to Louisiana to eat water hyacinth and provide “Lake Cow Bacon”; the plan narrowly failed to reach a vote.

Rogan criticizes Colorado’s wolf reintroduction as “ballot-box biology,” saying wolves moved from Oregon already accustomed to killing cattle were placed near Aspen, forcing ranchers to patrol continuously while receiving compensation for dead calves. He contrasts this with Yellowstone, where wolves helped reduce elk numbers by more than 40% and restored a functioning predator relationship in a different landscape. Shapiro describes teaching students to debate whether wolves should be introduced into California after assigning them roles such as rancher, politician, and conservationist. Although nearly all initially supported reintroduction, many changed their minds after considering other stakeholders’ constraints. She says conservation decisions need ecological expertise and perspective-taking.

Shapiro rejects the claim that gene editing is uniquely “playing God.” Humans have already driven extinctions, domesticated species, selected breeding traits, and decided which animals live where and in what numbers. She argues that refusing new tools also has consequences while extinction rates are thousands to tens of thousands of times above the fossil-record background rate. Potential applications include making Hawaiian honeycreepers resistant to avian malaria, transferring coral resistance to bleaching, and helping red wolves. She cites baby KJ, whose metabolic disease was treated with personalized CRISPR editing inside his body, as an early example of future therapies. She insists Colossal makes the fewest edits possible and evaluates risks carefully.

Colossal has announced work involving woolly mammoths, thylacines, and dodos, but Shapiro says any eventual rewilding would be slow, local, and governed by regional councils. Mammoths might suit Alaska or northern Canada; their 10–14-year reproductive maturity and two-year pregnancy make runaway population growth unlikely. Environmental DNA has also suggested mammoths and horses survived in Canada roughly 4,000–5,000 years ago, challenging standard extinction timelines. Shapiro says Colossal has DNA from other extinct animals, including the American cheetah, giant beaver, camelops, Irish elk, long-horned bison, and short-faced bear, but no plans to reintroduce predators such as dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, or cheetahs.

Shapiro emphasizes that fossils represent only a tiny and biased sample: preservation depends heavily on climate and sediment, so scientists cannot assume the last fossil marks the last living animal. She describes new sediment-DNA methods that can reconstruct whole ecosystems from plugs of lake sediment, and a recent report of 6,000-year-old Colombian skeletons with a distinct, now-extinct genetic lineage. Rogan raises unusual three-fingered, three-toed remains reported from Peru; Shapiro says DNA or protein testing would be needed before drawing conclusions. They also revisit Bigfoot: environmental modeling of reported sightings overlaps bear habitat, and bears walking upright—especially injured black bears—could explain some encounters.

Shapiro says dog domestication probably occurred around 15,000–20,000 years ago, though the location remains uncertain because early remains from warm regions may not preserve. Dogs required sustained human communities and a dependable human niche, while modern breeds such as poodles and border collies reflect extremely rapid recent selection. She compares this informal “laboratory” to plant grafting and livestock breeding. The conversation ends with her defense of academic research: universities produced foundational technologies such as MRI-related work and CRISPR, but funding scarcity and political conformity can suppress risk-taking. She and Rogan argue that abandoning research would let other countries advance faster, especially as China invests heavily in automated industry and biotechnology.