I think Colossal is betting on the fact that the general public will fall for sensationalism of this sort because of the low level of biology knowledge. This story makes me think Colossal is rather better at marketing than they are at genetics.
What they've created here are not actually dire wolves but a couple of timber wolves with about a dozen edits to 12 million gene pairs and the result is creatures that have phenotypic similarities to dire wolves but not their complete genetic signature.
How much of the 'gap' between species do their edits cover? Are these like 50% hybrids, or much closer to the original donor grey wolves? Is it the kind of thing that could result in more authentic (for lack of a better term) dire wolves after a few generations of breeding?
What they've created here are not actually dire wolves but a couple of timber wolves with about a dozen edits to 12 million gene pairs and the result is creatures that have phenotypic similarities to dire wolves but not their complete genetic signature.