Silver Ounce 2015 Animal Skins - Lonesome George, Coin from Niue - detailed information

Niue, a sovereign state in free association with New Zealand, uses two official legal tender currencies. The New Zealand Dollar is the circulation currency for daily transactions, while the government also authorises legal tender coins in the Niue Dollar currency for collector's purposes.

A number of mints issue a large variety of commemorative, bullion and collector coins under the authority of Niue. These coins are dedicated to historical or general popular culture themes not related to Niue itself. Many of them are in standard bullion sizes - typically, one ounce of silver (abbreviated as 1 oz Ag, where "Ag" comes from the Latin word for silver, Argentum). Many of these feature various animals.

This coin is the fourth release in the Animal Skins series and depicts Lonesome George, who was a male Pinta Island tortoise and the last known individual of the subspecies. In his last years, he was known as the rarest creature in the world; he died on 24 June 2012.

Lonesome George lived in the Galapagos, a chain of volcanic islands off the coast of Ecuador, in South America - islands that forever changed our understanding of the natural world. While visiting the Galapagos in 1835, British naturalist Charles Darwin observed local plants and animals. He became fascinated by species that seemed related to ones found on the mainland - but that also had many physical variations unique to different is-lands. Over time, Darwin began to wonder if species from South America had reached the Galapagos and then changed as they adapted to new environments. This idea that species could change over time led to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.