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When a small female tortoise was spotted in 2019 on the inaccessible volcanic island of Fernandina in the Galapagos, researchers were shocked.
Previously, only one other tortoise, a large male loner, had been found there in 1906 by explorer Rollo Beck. Scientists had thought this animal was the last of the "fantastic giant tortoise," or Chelonoidis phantasticus, rendering the species extinct.
Then they found Fernanda.
"It was almost too good to be true that there was a tortoise living on Fernandina. We were all just so excited," said Evelyn Jensen, lecturer in molecular ecology at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom and coauthor of a study published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology.
But when Fernanda was initially compared with the 1906 male specimen, kept in a collection at the California Academy of Sciences, the two looked so different that scientists had to question if they were the same species.
Some of the Galapagos tortoises have a domed upper shell, called a carapace, that resembles an upside-down bowl. But some species, such as the male specimen from Fernandina, have a saddleback-style carapace in which the front of the upper shell above the head and neck arches upward, Jensen said.
Previously, only one other tortoise, a large male loner, had been found there in 1906 by explorer Rollo Beck. Scientists had thought this animal was the last of the "fantastic giant tortoise," or Chelonoidis phantasticus, rendering the species extinct.
Then they found Fernanda.
"It was almost too good to be true that there was a tortoise living on Fernandina. We were all just so excited," said Evelyn Jensen, lecturer in molecular ecology at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom and coauthor of a study published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology.
But when Fernanda was initially compared with the 1906 male specimen, kept in a collection at the California Academy of Sciences, the two looked so different that scientists had to question if they were the same species.
Some of the Galapagos tortoises have a domed upper shell, called a carapace, that resembles an upside-down bowl. But some species, such as the male specimen from Fernandina, have a saddleback-style carapace in which the front of the upper shell above the head and neck arches upward, Jensen said.
