Giant tortoise found the first time after 100 years

[Jaga]

The “fantastic giant tortoise” — a rare Galápagos species with a huge, flared shell — has only been identified once, more than a century ago, in 1906. It’s since widely been considered extinct.

But that’s not the case, researchers found this week.



Hints that the mysterious species has lived on have arisen over the century — including 1960s reports of tortoise scat on the subspecies’ native Fernandina Island, which is the Galápagos’ youngest, most pristine and most volcanically active island. But anecdotes and rumors were “tenuous at best,” researchers told The Washington Post.

So, a team of conservationists and explorers in 2019 were astonished with a discovery on the rugged island: a lone female giant tortoise. They named her Fernanda.

Although she was the first tortoise discovered on the island since the 1906 spotting, researchers were not sure she was of the same subspecies — Chelonoidis phantasticus, or Fernandina Island tortoise — long thought to be extinct. In fact, many ecologists doubted it.

Fernanda seemed not to be native to Fernandina Island. Perhaps she had floated from a different island, or was taken in a storm, or moved by seafarers, some thought, according to a Princeton University news release.

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Galápagos tortoise



The Galápagos tortoise or Galápagos giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger) is a species of very large tortoise in the genus Chelonoidis (which also contains three smaller species from mainland South America). The species comprises 15 subspecies (13 extant and 2 extinct). It is the largest living species of tortoise, with some modern Galápagos tortoises weighing up to 417 kg (919 lb). They are also the largest extant terrestrial ectotherms.

With lifespans in the wild of over 100 years, it is one of the longest-lived vertebrates. Captive Galapagos tortoises can live up to 177 years. For example, a captive individual, Harriet, lived for at least 175 years. Spanish explorers, who discovered the islands in the 16th century, named them after the Spanish galápago, meaning "tortoise".



Galápagos tortoises are native to seven of the Galápagos Islands. Shell size and shape vary between subspecies and populations. On islands with humid highlands, the tortoises are larger, with domed shells and short necks; on islands with dry lowlands, the tortoises are smaller, with "saddleback" shells and long necks. Charles Darwin's observations of these differences on the second voyage of the Beagle in 1835, contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.



Tortoise numbers declined from over 250,000 in the 16th century to a low of around 15,000 in the 1970s. This decline was caused by overexploitation of the subspecies for meat and oil, habitat clearance for agriculture, and introduction of non-native animals to the islands, such as rats, goats, and pigs. The extinction of most giant tortoise lineages is thought to have also been caused by predation by humans or human ancestors, as the tortoises themselves have no natural predators. Tortoise populations on at least three islands have become extinct in historical times due to human activities. Specimens of these extinct taxa exist in several museums and also are being subjected to DNA analysis. 12 subspecies of the original 14-15 survive in the wild; a 13th subspecies (C. n. abingdonii) had only a single known living individual, kept in captivity and nicknamed Lonesome George until his death in June 2012. Two other subspecies, C. n. niger (the type subspecies of Galápagos tortoise) from Floreana Island and an undescribed subspecies from Santa Fe Island are known to have gone extinct in the mid-late 19th century. Conservation efforts, beginning in the 20th century, have resulted in thousands of captive-bred juveniles being released onto their ancestral home islands, and the total number of the subspecies is estimated to have exceeded 19,000 at the start of the 21st century. Despite this rebound, all surviving subspecies are classified as Threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.



The Galápagos tortoises are one of two insular radiations of giant tortoises that still survive to the modern day; the other is Aldabrachelys gigantea of Aldabra and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, 700 km (430 mi) east of Tanzania. While giant tortoise radiations were common in prehistoric times, humans have wiped out the majority of them worldwide; the only other radiation of tortoises to survive to historic times, Cylindraspis of the Mascarenes, was driven to extinction by the 19th century, and other giant tortoise radiations such as a Centrochelys radiation on the Canary Islands and another Chelonoidis radiation in the Caribbean were driven to extinction prior to that.