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The ‘amazing giant tortoise’ thought to be extinct since 1906 was spotted on the most virgin island on the planet

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It is called Fernanda, in honor of Fernandina, the island on which it was discovered, and it is the first of its kind identified for more than a hundred years, a specimen of “fantastic giant tortoise”, of which until now it was only known another specimen found in 1906.

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Fernanda was discovered in 2019 but now, thanks to a genetic analysis, Princeton researchers led by Stephen Gaughran They have confirmed that the species is not extinct, at least as long as Fernanda is still alive.

To the sequencing of Fernanda’s genomes and from the specimen found in 1906, the team showed that the two Fernandina tortoises belong to the same species (Chelonoidis phantasticus or “fantastic giant tortoise”) and are genetically different from the others.

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The Galapagos Islands have become the largest giant tortoise enclave in the world.

The Galapagos Islands have become the largest giant tortoise enclave in the world.

Details of the discovery were published this Thursday in the magazine Communication biology.

“For many years the original specimen was thought to have been collected in 1906 he had been transplanted to the islandas it was the only one of its kind, but now it seems to be one of the few that were alive a century ago,” he sums up Peter GrantGalapagos Islands expert and researcher at Princeton.

And that’s when Fernanda was discovered, many ecologists they doubted that it was a native phantasticus tortoiseas the specimen lacks the conspicuous enlargement of the back of the historic male specimen.

The turtle found on Fernandina Island would have been a little over 50 years old.

The turtle found on Fernandina Island would have been a little over 50 years old.

Another element of doubt is that although turtles they cannot swim from one island to anotherYes, they can float and be carried from one Galapagos island to another by hurricanes or major storms, and there are even records of sailors moving the tortoises between islands.

To determine which species Fernanda was, Gaughran sequenced her genome and compared it with that of the specimen collected in 1906 and with samples of the other 13 Galapagos tortoise species: three individuals of each of the 12 living species and one individual of the extinct C. abingdonii.

“We saw – honestly, to my surprise— that Fernanda was very similar to the one they found on that island over 100 years ago, and both were very different from all the turtles on the other islands,” Gaughran said.

The team believes Fernanda he is over 50 years oldbut it is small, maybe because sparse vegetation hindered its growth.

The coronavirus pandemic has driven humans out of the paradise of Galapagos, Ecuador.  And the animals got access to places they hadn't gone before due to the presence of people.

The coronavirus pandemic has driven humans out of the paradise of Galapagos, Ecuador. And the animals got access to places they hadn’t gone before due to the presence of people.

For Adalgisa Caccone, lead author of the study and a researcher at Yale University, the finding is encouraging but also raises new questions such as:there are more turtles in Fernandina with which to start a breeding program? How did the Fernandina tortoises colonize the Galapagos and what is their evolutionary relationship to other giant tortoises?

Since 1906, little but convincing evidence has been found that giant tortoises could continue to live on Fernandina Island, an active volcano at the western end of the Galápagos archipelago that has reputed to be the largest virgin island on Earth.

The origin of these tortoises in the Galapagos goes back a long way two or three million yearswhen a storm swept one or more giants off the South American mainland west and since they do not swim, they bred with others on their own islands, leading to rapid evolution, the same pattern followed by the Galapagos finches.

There are currently 14 different species of giant Galapagos tortoises, all of them descendants of the same ancestor.

Turtle populations were decimated by European sailors who hunted them to feed, after discovering that they could keep turtles alive on their boats with minimal effort, as the reptiles could survive on little food or water.

Fernanda is now at the Galapagos National Park Tortoise Center, a rescue and breeding facility, where experts are seeing what they can do to keep her species alive.

Source: Clarin

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