New giant tortoises discovered - 30th May 2022

A new species of giant tortoise has been discovered in the Galapagos. San Cristobal, the fifth largest island in the Galapagos, has been home to these giant tortoises for thousands of years.

It used to be believed that all the tortoises on the island were the same species. However, researchers have now established they are in fact separate species.

Explorers collected bones and shells of giant tortoises from the highlands of the island in 1906. Scientists used the bones to categorise all the giant tortoises on the island.

Scientific researchers at the University of Newcastle in the UK and Yale University in the US made the new discovery. They analysed the bones from 1906 again.

They compared them with giant tortoises living on the lowlands of the island today. The results revealed that the tortoises were actually different species.

The Galapagos Islands are in the Pacific Ocean and are situated 1,000 kilometres to the west of Ecuador. They were the destination for the naturalist Charles Darwin's expedition in 1845.

He spent months there observing the unique species of plants, birds and animals, and he wrote about his findings in The Origin of Species. The book made the Galapagos and giant tortoises famous. It's now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Ecuador's environment minister, Gustavo Manrique Miranda, has welcomed the identification of a new species of giant tortoise. Scientists will try to recover DNA from the bones or shells of the tortoises in museums, so they can see if the tortoises need to be given a new name and understand how they are related.