Galápagos George Timeline Galápagos George Timeline

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Galápagos George Timeline Discover the history of Galápagos George, a giant tortoise who was the last of his species, lived to be 100 years old, and became known as the rarest creature in the world.

1835: Charles Darwin visited the Galápagos Islands. David Stanbury, a scholar, notes that 1535: The bishop of Panama, while there, Darwin most likely Tomás de Berlanga, is credited witnessed Halley’s Comet, which with discovering the Galápagos. passed closest to Earth on October 1972: Lonesome George But history shows that earlier, 13, 1835. Darwin wrote the single was brought to live at the a pre-Columbian Inca named word “comet” in his notebook at this 1912: Lonesome George Charles Darwin Research Tupac Yupanqui also found a time. He also wrote that he saw an hatched close to this date, Station in hopes of finding group of islands, which could “immense Turpin (tortoise)” and maybe a few years earlier. him a mate. have been the Galápagos. that it “took little notice of me.”

3 million years ago: Eighteenth and 1906: Samples from three of 1959: The government 2012: Lonesome George, The islands that make up nineteenth centuries: Lonesome George’s ancestors of Ecuador created the the last of his giant tortoise the Galápagos Islands as Buccaneers, pirates, and whalers were taken by scientists from Galápagos National Park species, died. they are now were formed. stopping by the islands hunted the California Academy of to protect tortoises and There were older islands, tortoises for fresh meat. Sciences. Recently these samples their habitat. but they are now seamounts It is estimated that they killed helped scientists look for mates beneath the ocean surface. nearly 200,000 of the slow- that were closely related to the moving tortoises. They also Pinta Island tortoises. introduced rats, cats, dogs, pigs, and goats, which have destroyed much of the native habitat.

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