Schweigger Names the Giant Tortoise

1812

August Friedrich Schweigger formally described the animal as Testudo gigantea — the name that, after a bruising nomenclature fight, the ICZN finally conserved in 2013 as the basis of Aldabrachelys gigantea. Naming it mattered: it made the tortoise a scientific object at the exact moment sailors were eating the last of its relatives.