For over a century the dire wolf was classified as Canis dirus, a heavier sister species to the grey wolf. Skeletal similarity made the placement look secure. Genomic sequencing of five dire wolf specimens changed it: the lineage separated from that of grey wolves, coyotes, jackals and African wild dogs somewhere in the range of five to six million years ago.
Just as telling was the absence of gene flow. Grey wolves, coyotes and dogs hybridise readily and their genomes record it. The dire wolf genomes show no evidence of admixture with the wolves and coyotes that shared North America with them, which is what would be expected of a long-separate lineage that had lost interfertility. On that basis the species was returned to the older genus name Aenocyon.
The practical consequence is that no living canid is a close proxy for a dire wolf. Claims that the animal can be recreated by editing grey wolf genomes describe an engineered grey wolf with selected dire-wolf-like traits, not a restored species.