By Erin Cashion and David Dyer

On April 7, the story in Time magazine was posted everywhere: we had brought the extinct Ice Age Dire Wolf, Aenocyon dirus, back from the dead. Alongside this unbelievable headline came the video of two adorable white, fluffy canines in the hands of a human caregiver.

These two pups were Romulus and Remus, the culmination of years of work by the U.S.-based biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences. (This company made headlines in March 2025 with the news that they’d produced gene-edited “woolly mice”, which did not actually have any woolly mammoth DNA.) The pups alongside their sister Kahleesi represent the first of what is likely to be a series of “de-extinctions”, in which extinct animals are brought back to life using gene editing technology.

So, did Colossal Biosciences really de-extinct the Dire Wolf?

For quite a long time it was thought that dire wolves were simply a larger version of today’s Gray Wolf (Canus lupus) due to how similar their bones are. The dire wolf is thought to be about the size of today’s largest gray wolves, which are found in Alaska and northwest Canada. In some cases, it’s impossible to tell dire wolf remains from Ice Age gray wolf remains by physical comparison alone. One major difference is that the dire wolf had much larger carnassial teeth, the enlarged lower molar and upper premolar pair found in some carnivores that function to shear flesh.

However, recent genetic analyses indicate that the dire wolf represents a distinct lineage of canines that evolved in isolation from other canids in the Americas. The ancestors of today’s Gray Wolf and the Dire Wolf branched off from each other 5.7 million years ago. (For context, humans and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, split from a common ancestor 7 million years ago.) The North American Gray Wolf evolved in Europe and migrated to North America during an interglacial period 16,000 – 13,000 years ago, some time after humans arrived on the continent around 30,000 years ago. The branch that includes the Gray Wolf is also ancestral to Cape Hunting Dogs (Lycaon pictus), dholes, jackals, and coyotes. The gray wolf and dire wolf are different enough genetically that interbreeding would have been impossible, and they very likely would not have recognized each other as kin.

Bear in mind that, like our own lineage, the Dire Wolf and Gray Wolf did not spring fully formed from their shared common ancestor and remain unchanged in the intervening time – for both animals, there were many intermediate steps along the way, and many evolutionary dead ends.

The last Dire Wolf lived around 10,000 years ago. Remains have been found all over the Americas and as far south as Peru, with a startling number from the La Brea Tar Pits in California. The oldest remains have been dated to 125,000 years old, although some canid remains with an inconclusive identity (meaning they may be Dire Wolf or a Dire Wolf ancestor) have been dated to over 200,000 years old.

The beautiful, unusually large (and now half-grown) canids roaming Colossal’s  2000 acre ecological preserve are Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) that had 14 specific genes edited to match DNA collected from the remains of two specimens of Dire Wolf – one from Ohio, and one from Oregon. These genes are responsible for 20 traits including coat color, size, and growth rate “thought to be” characteristic of the Dire Wolf. No actual Dire Wolf DNA was spliced into their wolf genomes. Moreover, the difference between the two species is far more than just 14 genes. Also not taken into account is Dire Wolf mitochondrial DNA, which so far no research team has been able to retrieve.

So are they Dire Wolves, or not? That is a philosophical debate that boils down to the ultimate question with no single answer that lies at the heart of modern biology: what is a species?

By Marlise Schoeny, History Curator

Following the Civil War, Ohio became one of the leading manufacturers of uniforms and fraternal regalia in the United States. Five major companies were founded in Ohio, three of which were in Cincinnati, one in Columbus and one in London, Ohio. The oldest is Fechheimer Brother Company, founded in 1842. Fechheimer produced uniforms during the Civil War, and their business is still in operation today. The two largest manufacturers of fraternal regalia and organizational uniforms were Pettibone Brothers in Cincinnati, Ohio and the M.C. Lilley & Company in Columbus, Ohio. The Ohio History Connection has numerous artifacts and archival materials from both companies.  

M.C. Lilley & Company was founded by four Civil War veterans living in Columbus, Ohio. They were Mitchell Campbell Lilley, John Siebert, Charles Lindenbergh and Henry Lindenbergh. All four men were members of the Odd Fellows and worked together to produce a newsletter for the organization. It was through this publication that they began to receive numerous requests for regalia, which inspired them to start a company to produce these items. From 1865 to 1881 the name was the “M. C. Lilley & Co.”. In 1882 after the death of Mitchell Lilley the name changed to “The M. C. Lilley & Co.” and remained such until 1925 when it was shortened to “The Lilley Co.” By 1870, the company occupied an entire four-story building on S. High Street, with a glass-fronted showroom and retail store on the first floor. 

1870-1910 was known as the “Golden Age of Fraternalism,” and companies like Lilley and others, were well positioned to serve this growing market. Many of these societies’ uniforms were military in style, likely a nod to the militias they largely replaced following the Civil War. M.C. Lilley not only produced the uniforms, but the accessories that accompanied it. This included, hats, buttons, buckles, swords, epaulets, gloves, etc. The company grew quickly and was soon one of the largest companies in Columbus. The 1887 Report of the State Inspector of Workshops and Factories listed The M.C. Lilley & Co. as the second largest employer in Columbus with 420 employees. 

Fraternal regalia was only one variety of the uniforms Lilley produced, however. They also created uniforms for telegraph operators, railway workers, firemen, policemen and government officials. One such uniform is the frock coat of Henry Clay Taylor, the Judge Advocate General for Ohio from 1900-1904.  

Henry Clay Taylor was born in what is now Reynoldsburg, Ohio, in 1844 to David Taylor and Margaret Livingston. David Taylor was a prominent and successful farmer who settled in Franklin County in 1816. Henry Taylor enlisted in the Union army in June of 1863 and was part of the 86th Ohio Infantry under Colonel Barnabus Burns. The 86th Ohio Infantry mustered out of service at Cleveland, Ohio, on February 10, 1864. Following his service, Henry Taylor attended Miami University and Harvard University. He graduated from Harvard in 1868 and began his career as an attorney in Columbus, Ohio. Taylor served as a city councilman in Columbus, Ohio, from 1883-1887. His final public office was serving as the Judge Advocate General for Ohio, as appointed by Governor George Nash, from 1900 until 1904. It is likely that he wore the frock coat featured in this post on ceremonial occasions while serving in this position.  

In addition to this coat, the Ohio History Connection owns numerous pins, buttons, ribbons, caps and uniforms that can be researched through our online catalog found at https://museumcollections.ohiohistory.org/. The Archives and Library also has a number of collections related to M.C. Lilley & Company, including Mitchel Campbell Lilley's papers. These can be found online at https://ohiohistory.on.worldcat.org/discovery. Whatever your interest in Ohio's rich history, the Ohio History Connection can help you learn more!

By Taylor Grzesiek, Archives Services Intern

Hello and welcome back! My name is Taylor Grzesiek, and I’m an intern in the Archives Services Department. If you read my last blog post, I discussed my work processing the Columbus Citizen-Journal's vast photograph collection. [Check out Taylor's introduction to the collection and her work to make it accessible here!]

The Citizen-Journal (and its predecessor papers) operated through most of the 20th century. So, it's no surprise that its photo archive contains a little of everything from this era, including people, culture, politics, sports, local to global events and more. The items are organized in alphabetical order by subject. While working through these entries, I couldn’t help but notice dozens, if not hundreds, of women in the collection were listed under their husband’s names. In the finding aid, they were referred to only as “Mrs. husband’s name.” This practice applied to all women, including the well-known actress Flower Parry (previously listed as Mrs. Jackie Coogan), and influential local figure Hattie Lazarus (previously listed as Mrs. Robert Lazarus).

This naming practice made them not only more difficult to find, but it also has the effect of obscuring their work and very contributions that brought the press to write about them in the first place. This inspired my effort to research and restore the names of every woman in this collection who was instead listed under their spouse’s name.

Searching for Women's Names

To find these women, I used a few different tools. If I was lucky, there would be an address and a date written on the backs of these photos alongside the names. In that case, I could check old city directories or the Franklin County Auditor website to see who lived at that address at that point in time. Often, the woman’s first name was in one of those two places. If not, I could also check obituaries or digitized newspaper articles and crosscheck those with FindAGrave.com. In many instances, I was able to refile these women’s images under their full names. I transferred the previous listing under their spouse’s name into a catalog note so that it remained searchable.

Want to Learn More?

While these examples are only a few of many, hopefully they help convey the importance of referring to women by their full names in archives and recordkeeping. It helps us locate them more quickly and with ease, and more importantly, it restores their autonomy and status as individuals with their own stories, not merely counterparts of their spouses.

The phenomenon of “Mrs. Husband’s name” is not new. You’ve likely encountered it in our modern society, even though it was much more common in previous centuries. Have you ever wondered why? This practice is a relic of English “coverture” laws, in which a woman’s assets and were acquired by her husband upon marriage and her identity became “covered” by her husband’s. Essentially, a married woman was placed under the “ownership” of her husband. Henceforth, her identity was defined by her relationship to him. Many old documents, photos, and newspapers refer to women in this manner, often eclipsing their lives, contributions, achievements, or even hardships under their spouse’s name. Its side effect is erasure. They are shrouded in an extra layer of obscurity. It becomes difficult to track them in historical documentation. This makes research, or even simply learning about them, more difficult.

By restoring their names, we can make these women visible again. It makes it easier for their descendants to locate them in genealogical research. For professional researchers, it becomes easier to locate an individual and tie her to her contributions or historic events. Additionally, if a man married multiple times, the women would end up sharing an identity under their husband’s name. Adding their full names clears up any ambiguity and restores their individual identities.