According to a recent report published on bioRxiv, while reviving a species that was previously declared extinct is rare, researchers have found a remote volcano in the Galapagos filled with tortoises, 144 tortoises, to be exact, with a solid ancestry to the Chelonoidis elephantopus, the Floreana tortoise.
“In total, we encountered 144 individuals with saddle-backed morphology,” said the lead researcher. “Of those, 112 were released after taking blood samples, and 32 with pronounced saddle-backed morphology were transported to the Galápagos National Park Service’s captive tortoise breeding facility on Santa Cruz Island.”
Within the next few decades, researchers hope to return C. elephantopus tortoises to Floreana Island to continue their job as engineers of the island’s ecosystems.
“Our discovery raises the possibility that the extinct Floreana species could be revived,” the report continued. “In this case, tortoises with Floreana ancestry are living ‘genomic archives’ that retain the evolutionary legacy of the extinct species, removing the need for the cloning methods that have been proposed to bring back extinct species.”
The Floreana breeding program is expected to generate thousands of offspring within the next few decades.
