{"id":16123,"date":"2013-03-18T09:22:15","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T14:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=16123"},"modified":"2013-03-18T09:22:15","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T14:22:15","slug":"lonesome-george-to-be-embalmed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/18\/lonesome-george-to-be-embalmed\/","title":{"rendered":"Lonesome George To Be Embalmed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not sure if it is really called &#8220;embalmed&#8221; when done to a tortoise, but it is the same idea.  Lonesome George was a Galapagos Tortoise, <em>Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii<\/em>,  who was known for some time a the last living individual of his subspecies.  He lived on Pinta Island in the Galapagos.  He died on my birthday last year at the age of &#8220;more than 100 years old.&#8221;  These tortoises numbered over a quarter of a million a few centuries to just a few thousand today.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/03\/13\/lonesome-george-embalmed-galapagos_n_2862694.html\">The latest news<\/a> is that George will be embalmed, or preserved, at the Museum of Natural History in New York City and returned to the Galapagos at a later time.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cell.com\/current-biology\/retrieve\/pii\/S0960982207010688\">A 2007 study<\/a> of the genetics of Galapagos Tortoises (with <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yale.edu\/2012\/11\/15\/dna-tests-show-lonesome-george-may-not-have-been-last-his-species\">this followup<\/a>) suggests that George is not really the last of his kind.  There are over a dozen others!   It turns out that the tortoises on this particular island are genetically diverse and have relatives on other islands, as a result of natural and human-caused dispersal of the animals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not sure if it is really called &#8220;embalmed&#8221; when done to a tortoise, but it is the same idea. Lonesome George was a Galapagos Tortoise, Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, who was known for some time a the last living individual of his subspecies. He lived on Pinta Island in the Galapagos. He died on my &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/18\/lonesome-george-to-be-embalmed\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lonesome George To Be Embalmed<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-4c3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}