Lonesome George was a unique tortoise.0:25
He lived to tell the story of the existence of his subspecies.0:29
On the tiny, isolated island of Pinta.0:32
Tony Harper reports, sometimes the road to romance is long.0:36
Lonesome George, a giant Galapagos tortoise, was the last of his subspecies and had a profoundly lonely existence.0:42
Living far out in the Pacific on the island of Pinta in the Galapagos Islands, he was officially the rarest living creature on Earth until his death in 2012 at the age of over 100.0:53
No animal better captured the history and mysterious beauty of the Galapagos Islands than this giant tortoise.1:10
There used to be thousands of these creatures roaming over the islands, including the volcanic slopes of Pinta.1:19
Observation of them by Charles Darwin, who visited there in 1835, even formed part of his world changing theory of evolution.1:27
Sadly, however, mostly as a result of centuries of passing sailors hunting the giant tortoises for food, there are now only an estimated 15,000 left in the Galapagos Islands.1:37
Of the 15 known subspecies, four are already thought to be extinct, as was the Pinta giant tortoise until Lonesome George was discovered in 1971.1:51
This came as a pleasant surprise to scientists, since no other Pinta tortoises had been found on pinta island since 1906.2:04
In the decades that followed George's discovery, he became something of a star attraction.2:15
Conservationists at the Charles Darwin Research Station tried to rescue some of his genes by mating him with another tortoise.2:22
Two females from the nearby island of Isabella, the most closely related to the Pinta subspecies that could be found, were put into his enclosure with him in 1992.2:31
Unfortunately, though, George failed to take the hint.2:43
Then evolutionary biologist Geoffrey Powell came up with a possible reason why Lonesome George was not finding true romance with the ladies from Isabella.2:48
Perhaps, he suggested, they were simply too different to him to be a suitable match.2:59
Sailors often carried the tortoises from one island to another, he pointed out.3:05
His question, therefore, was how do we know these tortoises are Lonesome George's closest relatives.3:11
In other words, there could be a perfect pinter match for George alive and well, not just on Isabella, but on some even more distant island.3:19
To begin testing his theory, Professor Powell and his research team analyzed DNA from seven Pinta tortoises, six from deceased museum specimens and one from George himself, and compared it with blood samples from 27 giant tortoises living on the3:31
side of a volcano on the northern tip of Isabella.3:50
Among these samples, they found one tortoise about 30 years old, with clear signs of Pinta ancestry.3:55
Sadly, however, the newly discovered tortoise was not a suitable romantic partner for George.4:05
He was not purebred either.4:14
While his father was originally from Pinta island, his mother came from Wolf Volcano on Isabella.4:17
Powell considered he had made a breakthrough, though, because it proved that in the recent past a Pinta male had been breeding on the island.4:24
In that case, there was a clear possibility of finding other Pinta individuals out there, maybe even a female.4:35
However, Pearl's study had only examined a small random sample.4:44
So in 2008, a team of researchers returned to the Isabella volcano, where they collected more than 1,600 tortoises.4:49
To their amazement and delight, when blood samples were taken, 17 tortoises were shown to have high levels of pinter DNA.5:01
As tortoises can live for 150 years, some of these creatures may have been George's immediate relatives.5:12
Now, seven of these tortoises are housed in and around George's old enclosure while the scientists attempt to breed them.5:21
One male and female in particular, both have Pinter DNA, and it is hoped that in just a few generations, 95% of George's lost ancestral genes can be recreated.5:31
Therefore, the fate of the Pinta tortoise may not be as bleak as was previously thought.5:46
Meanwhile, although no longer with us, George's status as a conservation icon is still undisputed.5:54
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