Скачать или смотреть +4:3 FAMED GIANT TORTOISE 'LONESOME GEORGE' DIES

(25 Jun 2012) STORYLINE
The famed giant tortoise Lonesome George was found dead on Sunday, officials at the Galapagos National Park announced.
Lonesome George was believed to be the last living member of the Pinta island subspecies and had become an ambassador of sorts for the islands off Ecuador's coast whose unique flora and fauna helped inspire Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution.
The tortoise's age was not known but scientists believed he was about 100, not especially old for giant tortoises, who can live well over a century.
Scientists had expected him to live another few decades at least.
He lived at a tortoise breeding centre on the archipelago's island of Santa Cruz.
He was found Sunday morning in his pen by his longtime keeper, Fausto Llerena.
"I arrived to the door and Lonesome was good, he was climbing on some stones and then I returned and he was dead. I froze," Llerena said on Sunday.
Various mates had been provided for Lonesome George after he was found in 1972 in what proved unsuccessful attempts to keep his subspecies alive.
The park said the cause of his death would be investigated.
The park's director Edwin Naula said the tortoise's body would be preserved "so we can show him to the people who did not get to meet him."
The Galapagos' giant tortoise population was decimated after the arrival of humans but a recovery program run by the park and the Charles Darwin Foundation has increased the overall population from three-thousand in 1974 to 20-thousand today.


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