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Lonesome George Is Dead At 100
New submitter camperdave writes "Lonesome George, the last remaining tortoise of his kind and a conservation icon, died on Sunday of unknown causes, the Galapagos National Park said. He was thought to be about 100 years old."
Let's get the pedantic train started early: George was the last of his subspecies (Canoe gets this right... in one of two mentions.) A lot of other sources have been saying species incorrectly. Here's the corresponding Wikipedia page. There are still giant tortoises on Galapagos, just not any of the ones native to the island of La Pinta.
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He did; three times with two females from a different island a few years ago. The eggs were infertile.
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It looks like DNA from Lonesome George (along with many other specimens from the archipelago) were collected a few years ago and used in some analyses, suggesting they were at least partially sequenced. That article mentions sequencing of the full genome of Galapagos tortoises in general, but not necessarily George in particular. I would expect that it would be under way now if it wasn't already, however, especially with the recent affordability of sequencing.
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Different species, they hoped was "close enough" He should have his DNA be stored, maybe clone him in the future.
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The official classification is that they were subspecies, actually. However, especially in modernity, the term "species" is reserved for groups that definitely can't be interbred with viable offspring (for whatever reason), so we might as well apply that here, although it's all still hazy.
I believe they were separated by about ten million years; to put that in perspective, humans and chimps split 4–8 million years ago. Since one of the major limitations in cross-reproduction between two isolated species comes directly from the molecular clock of nucleotide change (specifically: different patterns of DNA hairpinning cause the paired chromosomes to be unable to recognize each other during gamete formation), even if they had managed to reproduce, it's almost certain the offspring would've been infertile.
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That theory is out; turtles don't lay eggs unless mating has occurred, and three clutches were found.
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It doesn't work that way for everything. In reptiles, the females have ZW, and the males ZZ. This means when a female self fertilizes (parthenogenesis) they can produce male and female offspring, as well as WW (usually inviable).
I have a pet turtle that has laid eggs twice now, most recently last week. It hasn't met another turtle since I bought it as a baby from the pet store, several years ago.
The XX/XY sex determination system is mostly the domain of mammals. Most reptiles and birds use the ZZ/ZW where the ZZ chromosome holders are male. Some reptiles use temperature based sex determination that is considered to be the ancestor of the other forms.