Scientists identify new Galapagos giant tortoise species

Ecuadorian Scientist Washington Tapia, who took part in the investigation that identified the new species on Santa Cruz Island, called the discovery “great news” because a few years ago, Galapagos lost the famed giant tortoise known as “Lonesome George”.

Within a 15 sq mile area on the Santa Cruz Island, lives Chelonoidis donfaustoi, the world’s newly identified species of the huge tortoises that call the Galapagos their home.

The magnificent creature has been named Chelonoidis donfaustoi, after a retired Galapagos park ranger.

“[The new species is] rounder and browner than the other ones”.

“This is a small and isolated group of tortoises that never attracted much attention from biologists previously”, Dr. James Gibbs, a team member and conservation biologist at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, said in the release.

For Adalgisa Caccone of Yale University and leader of the research team, the identification of the new species will pave the way for conservation efforts to guarantee its survival. Known to be incapable of breeding with each other because of being separate species, genetic evidence shows that the two Santa Cruz species did mate, although not very often.

But genetic analysis revealed that Cerro Fatal was not only its own species but also that although two tortoise types shared one island, “they are not each other’s sister species”, she said. “Until now, it was assumed that these groups belonged to the same species”. The Eastern Santa Cruz Tortoise is found on, not surprisingly, the east side of Santa Cruz Island, which sits in the center of Ecuador’s Galápagos Archipelago.

In the course of recent years, the quantity of titan tortoises in the Galapagos has essentially dwindled because of an assortment of variables.

The island of Santa Cruz has two populations of giant tortoises. It wouldn’t be the first time, as giant tortoises are no strangers to efforts gathered from biologists to help their numbers grow.