STEVE Irwin has angered the family of an eminent naturalist with his plan to bury Harriet, a Galapagos tortoise claimed to have been the world's oldest living creature.
Alongside the crocodiles that made Irwin famous, Harriet was a star attraction at Australia Zoo on Queensland's Sunshine Coast until her death last Friday of heart failure.
Irwin and his wife, Terri, want a private memorial service for Harriet when the tortoise - said to have been 176 years old - is buried at the zoo this week.
Irwin claims in the zoo's promotional material that the tortoise was collected by Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands in 1835, during the voyage that shaped his theory of evolution.
Before being sent to Australia Zoo in the late 1980s, Harriet lived for 40 years at Fleay's Fauna Reserve on the Gold Coast. The reserve was owned by the late David Fleay, an internationally renowned naturalist.
Fleay's daughter, Rosemary Fleay-Thompson, said yesterday Harriet was one of the last of a distinctive subspecies of tortoise found only on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos.
Ms Fleay-Thompson said she was disturbed at the prospect of Harriet being buried.
"It really would be a terrible waste. She is a very interesting animal scientifically and she should be kept as a specimen in the interests of science," Ms Fleay-Thompson said.
But Australia Zoo curator Kelsey Moulton said the Irwins were keen for the tortoise to be buried at the zoo.
"Putting her in a museum would be like selling your grandmother for science," she said.
The 150kg tortoise, listed by Guinness World Records as the planet's oldest living animal, died in time for Canberra author Anthony Hill to update the manuscript of a book he has written about Harriet.
Contrary to Irwin's claim, Hill said several tortoises collected by Darwin in the Galapagos came from James Island and not Santa Cruz, Harriet's birthplace.
However, Harriet was suspected of being one of three tortoises brought to Brisbane in the mid-1800s by government official John Wickham, who was an officer on Darwin's ship, The Beagle.
Although Australia Zoo held a 175th birthday party for Harriet last year, Hill said it was not possible to determine her age.
"All the DNA analysis tells us is that she was older and genetically diverse from the current tortoise population.
"She could have been born in 1830 or 1870. She was a very old animal, however."
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