Extinct Galapagos Tortoise possibly rediscovered

S

Surroundx

Well-Known Member
Hybrids of Chelonoidis elephantopus and C. becki have been found on Isabela in the Galapagos Islands. The former species has been considered extinct for 150 years, but DNA results show that pure bred individuals survived until at least on 15 years ago in the form of 1st generation crosses. Hopefully they find a live specimen (well more than one):

'Extinct' Giant Tortoise Found on Remote Island : Discovery News

'Extinct' giant tortoise found on remote island - Technology & science - Science - DiscoveryNews.com - msnbc.com

The Press Association: Tortoise species 'rediscovered'
 
Surroundx said:
The new paper responsible for the spate of recent new articles is available online:

Garrick et. al. (2012). Genetic rediscovery of an ‘extinct’ Galápagos giant tortoise species. Current Biology 22(1): 10-11.

The most important part of the paper is the Supplemental, which has all the "technical stuff":

http://download.cell.com/current-biology/mmcs/journals/0960-9822/PIIS0960982211013765.mmc1.pdf
Click to expand...

It is kinda old hat ... been known for a while.
The project has now set the goal of typing all tortoises there and finding the hybrids / crossbreeds and use these for captive-breeding. There is also an odd lot in captivity that holds more or less this phenomenon. It unleashes a range of options for breeding back the elephantopus.
 
Unless they find elephantopus themselves, which is an option with F1 hybrids of 15 years old, especially if only half of 38 founders are found which could give the opportunity of avoiding using hybrids at all.
 
I thought the articles state they are fairly confident they will find some pure Elephantopus remaining among the 1600 odd Tortoises on Wolf Volcano.
 
Are they looking for abingdoni and phantasticus too? I guess the chances for finding either of them would be vanishingly small, but if the tortoises have been moved around they cannot be zero.

Alan
 
Actually, the goal currently is to find representation of Floreana and Fernandina tortoises! The latter pure breds on Fernandina and the former possibly pure bred parental as well as large % genetic rep from Floreana tortoises (as well as hybrid Pinta tortoises) on non native northern Isabela on Volcan Wolf as accidental introducees from former whalers visiting and ransacking Galapagos for tortoise meat!
 
vogelcommando said:
It's now sure that at least a female Fernandina giant tortoise was among the animals found 2019 :) ! :

Galápagos tortoise found alive is from species thought extinct
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That is certainly great news for another rediscovery of a species thought extinct a century+ ago.

I wonder whether this may bring back forward the planned and postponed further expedition to Fernandina island this year to locate the purported more tortoises potentially living in the most inaccessible parts of the island. FYII: in 2019 more evidence of tortoises present was discovered in other parts of the island ..... It is actually quite a rugged and inhospitable countryside.
 
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