He weighed around 14 stone (90 kgs), was probably about a hundred years old and for the last 40 years had been that rarest of creatures, the very last of his subspecies. We don't know quite when he was born - it was probably before the Great War - but we do know where: Pinta Island, in the Galapagos Archipelago. At the time that he was discovered in the early 1970s it was thought that the Punta Island Tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni) was already extinct. It now is.
The Galapagos National Park Service (GNPS) announced the death of "Lonesome George" as he had become known, on Sunday, 24 June. He had been found dead in his corral in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island by Fausto Llerena, a park ranger at the Charles Darwin Research Station. Llerena had been a member of the expedition that brought George from Pinta in 1972 and had been his carer since 1983.
Lonesome George was part of the Tortoise Breeding and Rearing Program run by the Galapagos National Park Service but the various efforts that were made to get George to reproduce failed. Two female tortoises from the subspecies Chelonoidis nigra becki (from the Wolf Volcano region of Isabela Island) were put in Lonesome George’s corral. These females produced eggs at the end of 15 years with Lonesome George. Sadly all of the eggs were infertile.
Later two females from the Espanola tortoise population (the species that had been identified as most closely related to Pinta tortoises genetically) were put with George, but he did not mate with them.
As the last of his kind George gained international status as an important symbol for conservation efforts worldwide.
The Galapagos National Park Service has confirmed that with his death, the Pinta subspecies of tortoise has become extinct.
