Date: May 2007

Lonely George is probably the most famous tortoise in the world! He is the last known surviving last known individual of the subspecies geochelone nigra abingdonii, a giant Tortoise from the island of Pinta in the Galapagos Islands. Found in 1971, perhaps 80 years of (and could live to be 200), George now lives in the Darwin Research Station.

When Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835 he noted that tortoises on the different Islands had different beck shapes. Those with high vegetation had a shell enabling the neck to stretch up high (like George). Others had the lower shape we were more used to in days when the rarity of tortoises had not yet arisen to deny them as general pets (yes I had one as a child). Since the islands were relatively recent volcanic products, Darwin imagined that (assuming they were not specially created as separate species) they must have originated from one original pregnant individual or pair which somehow floated across from the mainland. The different neck shapes amongst the 11 subspecies, then, must be a product of evolution. This was not, at the time and in itself, particularly contentious. It is a big step from evolution of tortoise necks to evolving giraffes from amoeba, and even modern young-earth creationists may concede that the former could happen. But it was part of the seeding on an idea that he had not taken seriously before his voyage.

Is there hope of romance for “lonely George”? Since the 1990s a team at Yale have been using examination of mitochondrial DNA to explore the tortoise lineages and subspecies. Recently on the nearby Wolf Volcano on Isabella Island there was discovered a male tortoise identified as a cross between a Pinta male and an Isabela female. Researchers were hopeful that this meant they might therefore find a pure Pinta female somewhere amongst the some 1500 tortoises on Wolf Volcano. Actually, though, even if one is found it may not help George – he has shown no interest in the females of other subspecies in his pen, so unless it is love at first sight he may be disinclined to breed naturally. Perhaps bachelors get set in their ways.

One thing that is interesting about this is the change in scientific situation since Darwin arrived on the Galapagos. All he had to go on was the logic of:

1. the comparatively recent origin of the islands
2. the restriction in types of species on the islands
3. the neck etc variations amongst subspecies on islands with different vegetation

For evolution in general he had little more than a fossil record that was, to say the least, ambivalent in its paucity of intermediate species.

Now the geneticists at Yale have found that the differences between sub-species bloodlines are so clear that a new tortoise can be assigned with confidence to its group. The Yale team’s first major publication in 1999 indicated that the tortoises had floated in (as it were) from the mainland several million years ago to the southernmost islands, and then moved north to colonise the others. Very “recent” activities of whalers, pirates, have produced hybrids – all of which can be traced.

There will never, of course, be a knock down “proof” that evolution produced all living species, though science really dos not deal in “knock own proofs” anyway. Darwin himself actually had little evidence for his general theory of evolution, (though the same is actually true of Copernicus or Galileo in their times!). If you think that “the fossil record” was a proof then try reading Darwin’s Origin of Species in which he mostly tries to explain it away! But it would be a mistake to suppose that we are in the same kind of situation today. However we might want to question particular aspects of current evolutionary theory, and all science changes over time, the patterns found from mitochondrial DNA and gene sequencing today do seem to make most sense within an evolutionary framework.

Theologically all Christians are “creationists”. A central tenet in any theism (Jewish, Christian or Muslim) is that God designed the world – if we do not believe this then we are a-theists. A question we may ask today, however, is “How did he do it?” As God can work through nature (which he upholds) just as easily as through the miraculous, seeking a “natural” explanation, for the origin of species or sub-species is no more atheistic than seeking a natural meteorological explanation as to how God “creates the winds” (Amos 4:13). We need to humbly look at the nature God has created to find out what he did, and not dictate to him how we think he ought to have done it. If he chose to use an evolutionary process to create 14 subspecies of tortoise because (as Jesus said) God is “still working” (John 5:17), then who am I to argue?