Abstract
A FINE specimen of Porter's black tortoise (Testudo nigrita) has just been added to the Tortoise House of the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London. This is one of several species attaining a relatively gigantic size, which, a hundred and fifty years ago, swarmed in the Galapagos Islands, the Mascarene Islands, the Aldabras and the Seychelles. Then they attracted the attention of mariners, who forthwith began to visit these islands and carry away their victims by the boat-load. Exploitation of this kind,, whether of tortoises or whales, inevitably ends in extermination. On only a very few of these islands are any survivors to be found to-day. But it fortunately happened that many species were taken to other islands, where they bred. This was the case with the species which has just come to the Zoo. For Capt. Porter, on his voyage from the Galapagos, in 1813, distributed several young tortoises from his stock among the chiefs of the Fiji Islands. Many of these escaped, and bred there. The great size of these animals is shown by the fact that the shell of the various species ranged from three to six and a half feet along the curve. Until its death, a few years ago, the largest living tortoise known was owned by Lord Rothschild. This was a specimen of Testudo daudini, of the South Island of Aldabra, taken, with six others, in 1895. The length of the shell was 55 in., or 67\ in. over the curve. The total weight was 560 Ib. But even this was a mere pigmy compared with the extinct fossil tortoise (Colos-sochelys atlas) from the Lower Pliocene of the Siwalik Hills, India, which had a shell eight feet in length.
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A Giant Tortoise. Nature 135, 465 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135465c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135465c0