But due to the lengthy lifespan of the animals, Tapia said that he will not live to see the results: true to the slow pace tortoises are famous for, it should take about 120 years to get all the data in. He said that experts will soon start trying to get pairs in captivity to produce offspring close to their genetic origin. Now Tapia’s team is eyeing something of reverse natural selection: bringing back to life animals technically considered to have died out. One of their last sightings was by British naturalist Charles Darwin when he visited the Galapagos in 1835.ĭarwin studied the tortoises, which evolved in isolation, as he developed his theory of natural selection. The Floreana Island tortoise was widely thought to have been extinct for more than 100 years. At the time, he was believed to be the last of his kind.
Last year the body of “Lonesome George," a giant Galapagos tortoise once believed to be the last of its kind, was sent to New York after its death to be embalmed and then returned home.Ī rare Pinta Island giant tortoise discovered in 1971, George was estimated to be a century old when he died 24 June 2012. Giant tortoises have life spans of up to 180 years, growing to 1.8 meters (five feet nine inches) long and nearly 400 kilograms (880 pounds) in weight. “That gives us the possibility, literally, of bringing back these species which at the moment are considered extinct," Galapagos National Park applied sciences chief Washington Tapia told AFP. Among those with Pinta genes, at least one pair has 80% of the original species’ genes, while among the Floreana hybrids, many have up to 90% of the original species genes.
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