[5] Harriet was reportedly collected by Charles Darwin during his 1835 visit to the Galápagos Islands as part of his round-the-world survey expedition, transported to England, and then taken to her final home, Australia, by John Clements Wickham, the retiring captain of the Beagle.

However, doubt is cast on this story by the fact that Darwin had never visited Santa Cruz, the island that Harriet originally came from.

[6] In August 1994, a historian from Mareeba, Ed Loveday, published a letter in the local newspaper about two tortoises he remembered at the Botanic Gardens in 1922 and that the keepers of the time were saying that the tortoises had arrived at the Gardens in 1860 as a donation from John Clements Wickham, who was the first lieutenant (and later captain) of HMS Beagle under Fitzroy during the voyage of the Beagle in 1835.

[7] Wickham actually brought three tortoises (named Tom, Dick and Harry) to Australia when he arrived after retiring from the Royal Navy in 1841; these lived at Newstead House from 1841 to 1860.

Records show that the tortoises were donated to the Botanic Gardens in 1860 when Wickham retired as Government Resident of Moreton Bay (now Brisbane) and left Australia for Paris.

[citation needed] An initial analysis of Harriet's DNA was unable to identify her subspecies in a cross section of 900 animals representing 26 extant and extinct populations.

However, her genetic diversity and other factors in her DNA sequence data indicated she was most likely at least two generations removed from the oldest specimens of her species in the dataset.

[citation needed] This dating rules out many alternative possibilities for Harriet as, prior to 1900, Australia was a very difficult place to get to.

[citation needed] The tortoises collected by Darwin were all recorded in Fitzroy's journals of the voyage, including their measurements.