How we traced the giant tortoises that lived in South Africa long ago
By Charles Helm for The Conversation In 1835 Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, was exploring an island in the Galápagos archipelago when he encountered “two large tortoises, each of which must have weighed at least two hundred pounds”. He had never seen anything like them. He became entranced by the animals and took at least one back to England as a pet.