According to a USA Today report, citing a genetic survey carried out by the researchers at the Yale University, a giant Galapagos tortoise species which was believed to have gone extinct in the 1840s is still alive and in good health.

While it had been assumed in the past that the Galapagos tortoise species had been wiped out by poachers, researchers have now located members of the supposedly-extinct species.

The researchers’ testing of the DNA of 1,600 tortoises on the Galapagos island of Isabela has recently revealed that least 84 of the tortoises were offspring of a species which initially inhabited Floreana Island.

The findings by the researchers chiefly comprise the unearthing of the direct descendants of nearly 38 purebred creatures of Chelonoidis elephantopus which are presently living on the volcanic slopes of Isabela Island’s northern coast – that is, approximately 200 miles away from their original familial dwelling in Floreana Island.

The survey underscores that even though the Floreana populace of the Galapagos tortoises was seemingly annihilated by whalers in the years after naturalist Charles Darwin’s historic 1835 voyage, it is highly likely that some of the members of the species fleed from the ships and reached Isabela - the island where their offspring now survive.

About the amazing “come back” of the giant Galapagos tortoise species, former Yale postdoctoral researcher Ryan Garrick said: “To our knowledge, this is the first report of the rediscovery of a species by way of tracking the genetic footprints left in the genomes of its hybrid offspring.”