Title: Evolve or Die
Original title: Evolve or Die
Author(s): Phil Gates
Release year: 1999
Publisher: Scholastic UK
Why in Database:A book from the Horrible Science series. It’s about evolution, soDarwin and the Galapagos Turtles couldn’t be missing! Turtles appear abundantly in the fragment about him, they are mentioned in 3 other places in the book, besides that, in the visual layer, they are found on many graphics. We present all this below:
Pterosaurs soared overhead, while Ichthyosaurs and giant turtles cruised the oceans.
Charles Darwin belched contentedly and leaned back in his chair. He picked at a morsel of tortoise flesh that had stuck between his teeth.
”That made a tasty meal, Captain Fitzroy,” he said. ”But I wish we could have taken the giant tortoises home alive.”
(…)
”I’m sorry, Darwin, but there’s just no room for any more live animals. Look around you. Where could we put six giant tortoises?”
Darwin eyed Fitzroy’s hammock, but said nothing. His gaze shifted idly to the pile of empty tortoiseshells. Each one came from a different island in the group of Galapagos Islands that they had just left behind. Suddenly Darwin noticed something that he hadn’t spotted before. Each shell had a slightly different pattern. Why? he wondered.
He pondered the question for some time before a thunderous thought hit him. His jaw dropped. His eyes glazed over. The jars of preserved specimens swam before his eyes.
The penny finally dropped. It was the Galapagos tortoises that set Darwin’s mind racing. Could it be that a single type of tortoise had originally landed on one island, swimming across from the coast of South America? And could it be that its descendants changed a bit, every time they’d colonized a new island? Each island was a bit different, with different kinds of plants growing on it, so maybe the tortoises that lived on each island needed to be a little bit different too.
Suddenly, it all seemed to make sense. He thought back to the birds that he’d seen on the islands. There were little brown finches on every island, and each island had its own special versions of these birds. They were all basically the same, but each species on each island had a slightly different beak shape. Perhaps they’d all evolved from the same species which had arrived on one island then evolved a bit when it spread to the others.
As they sailed home Darwin became certain that you could tell which island a tortoise came from by the pattern on its shell. They probably had other tell-tale atures too, but unfortunately it was too late to find out. They I loaded some live giant tortoises on board HMS ‘d Beagle, and he and Fitzroy had eaten them.
Still, it looked suspiciously like all the different types of tortoise had evolved from a single ancestor. Darwin began to wonder whether all kinds of living things had evolved in the same sort of way.
The differences between the tortoises were quite small, but later he began to wonder whether evolution could explain bigger differences between species too? Could fish have wriggled out of the sea, grown legs and evolved into amphibians like newts and frogs?
GALAPAGOS GUIDE BOOK
The Spanish discovered these Islands in 1535. They found giant tortoises there, so they called them the Galapagos Islands after galapago, the Spanish word for tortoise.
The Islands were created by undersea volcanic eruptions, 960 km west of the coast of Ecuador in South Volcanoes still erupt there quite often.
The Islands were once a favourite holiday destination for pirates and buccaneers, who came for a bit of rest and relaxation after raiding South American cities. The peckish pirates were particularly partial to a glant tortoise barbecue on the beach.
Evolve or Die Fact File
NAME: Giant tortoise
HABITAT: The Galapagos Islands
A single Galapagos giant tortoise can weigh 250kg. It takes eight men to lift one.
Sallors used to ride on them for fun. Darwin discovered that their top speed was about four miles per day.
Eleven different species of Galapagos tortoise survive today, each on its own Galapagos Island. Sadly, there’s only one giant tortoise left on the Island of Pinta. He’s a male, called Lonesome George. A reward of $10,000 has been offered to anyone who can find a genuine female Pinta giant tortoise to keep Lonesome George company.
Sometimes animals can become castaways. They can get carried out to sa and end up stranded on islands. Remember those Galapagos giant tortoises, and Darwin’s finches that he found on the Galapagos Islands?
Nothing can bring back extinct species, but there’s still time to save tigers, Spix’s macaw, the Californian condor, the Madagascan serpent eagle, the ivory-billed woodpecker, the hawksbill turtle and the giant panda, which are all sliding towards extinction…
Author: XYuriTT
