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We examined the type material of the extinct tortoise species  Geochelone atlantica  López-Jurado, Mateo and García-Márquez, 1998 from Sal Island, Cape Verde, using aDNA approaches and AMS radiocarbon dating. High-quality mitochondrial genomes obtained from the three type specimens support that all type material belongs to the same individual. In phylogenetic analyses using mitochondrial genomes of all species groups and genera of extant and some recently extinct tortoises, the type material clusters within the extant South American red-footed tortoise  Chelonoidis carbonarius  (Spix, 1824). Our radiocarbon date indicates that the tortoise from which the type series of  G. atlantica  originates was still alive during 1962 and 1974. These results provide firm evidence that the type material of  G. atlantica  does not belong to the Quaternary tortoise bones excavated on Sal Island in the 1930s, as originally thought. Thus, the extinct tortoise species remains unstudied and lacks a scientific name, and the name  G. atlantica  has to be relegated into the synonymy of  C. carbonarius . The circumstances that led to this confusion currently cannot be disentangled.

“Ancient DNA” reveals that the scientific name for an extinct tortoise from Cape Verde refers to an extant South American species