Saddle-backed Rodrigues Giant Tortoise

The Saddle-backed Rodrigues giant tortoise (Cylindraspis vosmaeri) was a species of giant tortoise in the Testudinidae family. It was endemic to Rodrigues. The human introduction of predators and hunting pressures are believed to have caused the extinction of this species roughly around 1800.

Read more about Saddle-backed Rodrigues Giant Tortoise:  Description and Evolution, Human Settlement and Extermination, Ecological Role and The Re-wilding of Rodrigues

Famous quotes containing the words giant and/or tortoise:

    In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
    And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
    Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
    Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
    Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
    Of how life should be.
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)

    Deathlessness should be arrived at in a ... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.
    —E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)