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About This Book
Lonesome George is a 5 foot long, 200 poundtortoise, between 60 and 200 years old. In 1971 he was discovered on the remote Galapagos island of Pinta, from which tortoises had supposedly beenextinct for years. He has been at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz island ever since, on the off-chance that scientific ingenuity will conjure up a way of reproducing him and resurrecting his species. Meanwhile, countless tourists and dozens of baffled scientists have looked on as the celebrity reptile shows not a jot of interest in the female company provided. Today, Lonesome George has come to embody the mystery, complexity and fragility of the unique Galapagos archipelago. His story echoes the challenges of conservation worldwide; it is a story of Darwin, sexual dysfunction, adventure on the high seas, cloning, DNA fingerprinting and eco-tourism.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-Title
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue: A conservation icon
- 1 Discovery
- 2 Lonesome George's girlfriend
- 3 The origin of a species
- 4 Random drift
- 5 Man trap
- 6 Lock up your tortoise
- 7 The mysteries of Pinta
- 8 The diaspora
- 9 Wild at heart
- 10 Faking organisms
- 11 Clones and chimeras
- What Now?
- Notes and sources
- Bibliography and further reading
- Figure acknowledgements
- Index