William Shatner Tours the Lab Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth, and Captain Kirk Just Found a New Frontier

The final frontier, it turns out, might be behind us.

William Shatner has explored strange new worlds on television and traveled to the edge of space in real life. Now, Captain Kirk is looking in another direction: back toward the creatures Earth has lost.

As Star Trek marks 60 years since its September 1966 debut, Shatner stopped by Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas based de-extinction lab for a behind-the-scenes look at the company working to bring back the woolly mammoth. For the 95-year-old actor, the visit offers a striking connection to an experience that changed how he saw this planet.

In October 2021, at age 90, Shatner took a Blue Origin flight to the edge of space, becoming the oldest person to make the trip at the time. But the experience wasn’t the celebration he had expected. He later described looking back at Earth and feeling grief, overwhelmed by the planet’s fragility and the scale of what humanity stands to lose.

His visit to Colossal put him face-to-face with scientists exploring whether some of those losses could be reversed.

Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm shared the visit on Instagram, quoting Shatner’s iconic character, James T. Kirk: “Risk is our business. That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”

Lamm is leading the Dallas-based company’s ambitious effort to use genetic engineering in pursuit of de-extinction. Its targets include the woolly mammoth, dodo, moa and Tasmanian tiger, with Lamm pointing to 2030 as the goal for the first mammoth calves.

Colossal drew widespread attention in 2025 when it unveiled genetically engineered wolf pups it described as dire wolves. Its efforts have also attracted celebrity backers, including Tom Brady, Paris Hilton, Chris Hemsworth and Peter Jackson. Shatner posed for photos alongside Lamm during his visit, adding another familiar face to the interest surrounding the company.

But it’s Shatner’s own journey, from playing a space explorer to becoming one and returning with a profound sense of Earth’s vulnerability, that gives the visit its resonance.

Six decades after Kirk first steered the Enterprise toward the future, Shatner is finally exploring the other frontier, the one that runs backward, toward everything we thought was gone for good.