The giant turtle that lived on Floreana Island has been resurrected. “In the 19th century, hungry whalers hunted the Floreana giant tortoise to extinction. But because the tortoises were often kept alive aboard ships, some ended up as castaways on neighboring Galápagos islands, where they interbred with local giant tortoise subspecies. In 2000, sciesntists identified these hybrids and, in the 2010s, began selectively breeding them back toward the original Floreana lineage. Hundreds of juveniles have since hatched, and now the “resurrected” subspecies is being reintroduced to its home island,” reports The Doomslayer.
National Geographic adds: “When Charles Darwin arrived at Floreana in 1835 on the journey that would spark his theory of evolution, he heard of whaling vessels taking as many as 700 tortoises on one visit. ‘Their numbers have of course been greatly reduced in this island,’ he wrote. Historians estimate that between 1774 and 1860, passing ships took some 100,000 of the nearly 300,000 tortoises that lived on the islands when the Spanish arrived in 1535, driving populations of all 15 Galápagos tortoise species into steep decline and three to extinction. The Floreana tortoise, last seen in the 1850s, was the first to disappear. Almost two centuries later, though, the Floreana tortoise is set to become the first extinct Galápagos species to be returned to its ancestral home.”
Wikipedia gives a lower figure for the number of Floreana giant tortoises in Darwin’s time, saying, “The tortoise population of Floreana is estimated to have originally comprised some 8,000 individuals. Extinction occurred during the 1840s or 1850s following overexploitation for food by sailors and settlers, as well as predation and habitat degradation from introduced species, including goats, pigs, dogs, cats, donkeys, and rodents Also blamed for the extinction was a massive wildfire on Floreana in 1820, initially started as a prank by Thomas Chappel, a crewman on the whaling ship Essex (best known for being sunk by a sperm whale shortly afterwards, inspiring the novel Moby-Dick). By the time Charles Darwin arrived in 1835, decades of exploitation had driven the population to critically low levels, with Darwin recording that about 20 years worth of harvestable tortoises were left. The tortoises finally disappeared around 1850.”
Scientists aiming to bring back the woolly mammoth created woolly mice.
A company has created woolly-mammoth meatballs, resurrecting the flesh of long-extinct giants.
