Posted on 09/14/2017 8:10:38 AM PDT by Red Badger
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- Scientists in Ecuador's Galapagos islands are hoping to restore a tortoise species believed extinct since the 1800s.
The Chelonoidis elephantopus lived on Floreana Island and was captured by seamen in large numbers for food during long journeys across the Pacific. The species is thought to have disappeared shortly after Charles Darwin's celebrated visit to the treasured archipelago.
But a group of international scientists who collected 1,700 blood samples from tortoises on Isabel Island farther north during a research expedition in 2012 made a surprising discovery: 80 had genetic traces of the lost species.
"This is a species that was considered extinct for 160 years," Washington Tapia, one of the scientists studying the tortoises, told The Associated Press. "We didn't imagine what we would find."
Researchers with the Galapagos Conservancy and the Galapagos National Park are now trying to restore the species by selecting 20 specimens with higher amounts of the Floreana tortoise in its DNA to reproduce.
"We are not going to have a perfect species, genetically 100 percent like the one that was in Floreana," said Linda Cayot, a scientific consultant with the Galapagos Conservancy. "But we will have a tortoise population with many of the same genes as the original."
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
I love it.
As slowly as they breed and grow, this could take centuries.
C’mon. Slow and steady....
Oh goody....more walking rocks.
But their mouth watering savory goodness is well worth the wait!
Just think, if we breeded Jefferson’s descendants with other Jefferson descendants, we’d eventually have, uh, well, just a bunch of regular folk Oprah could interview.
It won’t be a 100% copy.
It’ll be a mock turtle..................
Why?
Because the sailors of the 1800’s would take some of the now extinct tortoises and drop them off at other islands in the chain, so no 100% descendants are now possible. But with selective breeding, a good portion of the results should approximate the original................
I find it noble that scientists are making the effort to provide yummy turtles to passing sailors.
What they need is a way to go directly from DNA to soup; skip all those growing decades in between.
I wonder if they taste anything like spotted owl.
Hey, what do you want? Speed or comfort?
Speed, comfort or quality. Pick any two.
No it is a fake turtle and a waste of money
It was a pun.........................
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