This news gives "a lot of hope" to the Galapagos National Park.
After DNA analyzes and two years of waiting, Ecuador confirmed on Tuesday that the giant tortoise discovered in 2019 in the Galapagos archipelago does indeed belong to a species that experts thought extinct for more than a century.
A team of geneticists from the American University of Yale compared the DNA of this female turtle found on Fernandina Island with that of a male, the last to have been recorded in the Galapagos in 1906. This specimen is today ' hui a museum piece and owned by the California Academy of Sciences.
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"This discovery of course strengthens our hope of saving this species, in order to prevent it from a fate similar to that of George the lonely", the emblem of the archipelago, underlined Danny Rueda, the director of the Galapagos National Park.
George, the last specimen of Chelonoidis abingdoni, died without offspring in 2012, failing to agree to mate with females of similar species.
This giant tortoise is one of the fifteen species recorded in the archipelago, two of which are now extinct.
