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A New Species ‘Impressive’ Tortoise Discovered

  • 26 Jun 2019

A team of herpetologists from the Forest Department and two NGOs found the Impressed Tortoise (Manouria impressa) in Lower Subansiri, Arunachal district a few days ago.

Impressed Tortoise:

  • An ‘impressed’ tortoise (Manouria impressa) has been found in Arunachal Pradesh. It is considered so beautiful that it has been named ‘impressed’.
  • This is the first occurrence of this tortoise in India, taking the count of tortoise to five and the non-marine chelonian count to 29. Chelonian is an order of reptile that includes turtles, terrapins and tortoises.

Other species of tortoise:

  • There are only two species of tortoises under the Manouria genus i.e. Asian Forest Tortoise and Impressed tortoise. India was known to be the home of only the Asian Forest Tortoise (Manouria emys) until the discovery of the Impressed Tortoise.
  • The Asian Forest Tortoise is the largest in mainland Asia and is found only in the northeast in India.