The last time anybody saw a live Chelonoidis phantasticus was in 1906. But there she is.
The tortoise (photo, left) was found on a little-explored volcanic island in the Galápagos archipelago, which helps explain how she crawled under the radar so long.
“Everything we knew about this species said it was extinct,” a Princeton researcher said. “So it’s a big deal for a species that we thought was extinct for a hundred years to suddenly appear here.”
The tortoise was spotted in vegetation in 2019 and DNA testing recently confirmed its species.
As this one is only 50 years or so old, she can’t be a holdover from the population the 1906 tortoise came from, suggesting there may be a reproducing population on the rugged island (photo, right.
Tracks of two or three other tortoise have been seen on the island that could be from the same species.
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