Goodbye, Lonesome George.

Lonesome George in his corral at the Charles Darwin Research Center on Isla Santa Cruz.

In December 1971 , the last Pinta Island tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni) was discovered in the Galápagos.  This solitary male would come to be known as "Lonesome George", and he would spend the rest of his days serving as an international symbol for conservation.  As the last of his subspecies, much effort was put into trying to breed him with females of closely related subspecies, but all eggs laid were infertile.  Today, Lonesome George's life ended, and with it, another (sub)species has gone extinct.

I ♥ turtles, even the goat sucking ones.

It's true. Every since I was a wee lad, I've had a soft spot for chelonians. Perhaps it had something to do with a group of adolescent, transmogrified, "reptilian" practitioners of an unconventional martial art style. Or maybe it was just because the order Testudines is chock full of really (anatomically) odd, really cool critters. Shame on me, once again, for so far excluding an entire clade of organisms here at Superoceras. I'll use the recent publication of a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology to change that, straight away.