A giant tortoise believed to be extinct has been discovered by researchers on the Galápagos island of Fernandina. That gives hope to science for some kind of recovery.
Fernandina – For a century it was considered eradicated – but: The Fernandina – living giant tortoise was discovered by scientists in the wild. This gives the researchers hope, because the Chelonoidis phantasticus could be the only one of the 15 giant tortoise species native to the Galápagos Islands (* FNP reported) to spread again.
As reported by the BBC , researchers found a female specimen of the giant tortoise Chelonoidis phantasticus during an expedition on the Galápagos island of Fernandina in 2019.
Giant tortoise species discovered on Galápagos Island: “Hope lives”
A DNA sample from the turtle was compared at Yale University with a sample taken in 1906 from a male turtle of the same species. According to zeit.de , it was confirmed that the female turtle discovered actually belongs to the species Chelonoidis phantasticus , which is considered extinct. The researchers now want to find even more specimens of this species and hope that it will spread.
Many related giant tortoise species in the Galápagos Islands * have long been extinct. Most recently, researchers tried to mate the male turtle “Lonesome George” of the species Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii with other Galápagos subspecies, but the animal died in 2012 at the age of more than a hundred years, as zeit.de reported.
The Galápagos Islands are part of Ecuador, whose Environment Minister Gustavo Marique was visibly happy about the rediscovery of the giant tortoise on Twitter: “Hope is alive”. * FNP is an offer from IPPEN.Media.
