Because those specimens were juveniles, their parents-including a Pinta Giant Tortoise-might still be alive. A 2012 expedition to Isabella Island found 17 first-generation hybrid offspring. But all hope for the species didn’t die with George, whose legacy still serves as an important symbol for conservation efforts in the Galápagos Islands. In 2012, the death of Lonesome George, the last Pinta Giant Tortoise, made international headlines. Randy Jones Having discovered a fondness for insects while pursuing her degree in Biology, Randi Jones was quite bugged to know that people usually dismissed these little creatures as creepy-crawlies. Unfortunately, the couples weren’t successful at producing offspring. The species was assumed to be extinct-until a single male was discovered on the island in 1971, dubbed “Lonesome George.” George, the sole remaining survivor of his species, was relocated to a breeding center where herpetologists encouraged him to mate with females from the adjacent islands with similar genetics. At least three species of giant tortoise are thought to have gone extinct including the Pinta tortoise, whose last. But by the end of the 19th century, most of the Pinta Island Tortoises had been wiped out due to hunting. The lumbering animals spent their days munching grasses and cactuses, resting, and dispersing seeds in their forest habitat. Each island hosts unique species, and the tortoises of Pinta Island were no exception. Since then, Lonesome George has been a powerful symbol for conservation efforts in general and for the Galapagos Islands in particular. The species is currently considered to be extinct, though it needs more evidence in support of this declaration. The Galápagos Islands are home to some of the world’s most unique animals, including numerous species of large, slow-moving tortoises. The tortoise was believed to be extinct in the mid-20th century, until Hungarian malacologist Jzsef Vgvlgyi spotted Lonesome George on the Galapagos island of Pinta on 1 December 1971. Pinta Island Tortoise was a species of giant tortoise found on Pinta Island in Ecuador. The giant tortoise is a protected species and on the Galapagos Island, in the town of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island, they have created a center to protect. Fernandina Island is the youngest and least explored of the Galápagos Islands. With that mystery solved, researchers will be trying to determine if there are other individuals on the island and, if so, whether they are also Fernandina Galapagos Tortoises. When the animal was found in 2019 on an expedition led by the Galápagos National Park Directorate and Galapagos Conservancy and supported by Discovery’s Animal Planet, the main question the team had to answer was whether she was, in fact the possibly extinct Fernandina Galapagos Tortoise or a different tortoise species in the form of an individual translocated from another island. The finding marked the seventh rediscovery of one of Re:wild’s original top 25 most wanted lost species and the longest lost on that list. In 2021, scientists at Yale University, with support from Re:wild and other partners, confirmed a genetic match between the only individual Fernandina Galapagos Tortoise (or Fernandina Giant Tortoise)-collected in 1906-and a single female tortoise found during a 2019 expedition to Fernandina Island.
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