Fernandina Island Galápagos tortoise
Fernandina Island Galápagos tortoise | |
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Holotype adult male specimen, collected by Rollo H. Beck in 1906. | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Reptilia |
Order: | Testudines |
Suborder: | Cryptodira |
Superfamily: | Testudinoidea |
Family: | Testudinidae |
Genus: | Chelonoidis |
Species: | |
Subspecies: | C. n. phantasticus |
Trinomial name | |
Chelonoidis niger phantasticus (Van Denburgh, 1907) | |
Synonyms | |
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Chelonoidis niger phantasticus (commonly known as the Fernandina Island Galápagos tortoise or Narborough Island giant tortoise) is a subspecies of Galápagos tortoise that was discovered in 1906 and thought extinct, until a single female was discovered living on Fernandina Island by an expedition in February 2019. In May 2021, a genetic test carried out by scientists from the California Academy of Sciences confirmed that the single female tortoise discovered in 2019 is from the subspecies Chelonoidis niger phantasticus. The subspecies name has often been misspelled as phantastica, an error introduced in the 1980s when Chelonoidis was elevated to genus and mistakenly treated as feminine, an error recognized and fixed in 2017.
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