Lonesome George, the famed giant Galapagos tortoise who died on Sunday, is to be embalmed and kept for future generations, Ecuadorian officials say.
The Pinta Island tortoise, believed to be the last of his subspecies, will be put on display on Galapagos' Santa Cruz island, the environment minister said.
Minister Marcela Aguinaga said an autopsy had found that Lonesome George had died of old age.
He was estimated to have been about 100 years old.
With no offspring and no known individuals from his subspecies(Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni) left, Lonesome George became known as the rarest creature in the world.
For decades, environmentalists unsuccessfully tried to get the Pinta Island tortoise to reproduce with females from a similar subspecies on the Galapagos Islands.
He became a symbol of the Galapagos Islands, which attract some 180,000 visitors a year and whose flora and fauna helped inspire Charles Darwin's theories on evolution.
Some 20,000 giant tortoises of other subspecies still live on the Galapagos.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!