CaringCreatures

I'll Be Back

The biodiversity of the Galapagos Islands has fallen dramatically since Darwin's time. Many species have become extinct, existing only as dusty zoological specimens in museums across the world. Once these species are lost there is no way to get them back - or at least that's the common thinking. However, now through careful cross-breeding of close relatives it may be possible to restore one tortoise species, the late great Geochelone elephantopus. This will by no means be an easy or quick cure. In fact it could take centuries.

Geochelone elephantopus went extinct just two decades after Charles Darwin's historic visits to the islands. In fact, the distribution of related tortoise species across the islands was one of many pieces of evidence used by Darwin in his "On the Origin of Species" to support his proposed mechanism of natural selection.

The different species of tortoise on the various islands have evolved in isolation for a very long time, however, contemporary naturalists hope that there will be sufficient overlap between the various tortoise genomes, such that with several generations of breeding they can rekindle the extinguished flame of the Geochelone elephantopus species.

This particular tortoise species was hunted to extinction as it lived on the low lying island of Floreana. The level terrain, and of course their famously slow pace, made them easy to catch, particularly for human hunters. The entire crew of many whaling ships would feed of tortoise flesh, quickly depleting the remote population.

The idea of recreating this tortoise species is little more than a thought experiment at the moment. However, the very idea seems to have one team of experts from Yale very excited.

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