DISTRIBUTION: Geochelone carbonaria occurs in southeastern Panama and west of the Andes in the Chocó of Colombia, but its main range is east of the Andes in eastern Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, eastern Brazil possibly south to Rio de Janeiro and west to eastern Bolivia, Paraguay, and northwestem Argentina (see Bertonatti 1997,Chebez et al. 1994,and Scott and Lovett 1975). An isolated population occurs at Tarapoto, Province San Martin, Peni (Carrillo de Espinoza and Lamas 1985, Carrillo de Espinoza and Icochea 1995). The second Peruvian locality for G. carbonaria mentioned by Carrillo de Espinoza and Lamas (1985), Parque Las Leyendas, is a zoo in Lima City (Javier Icochea, pers. comm.), and not a legitimate distributional record. This tortoise may occur naturally on Trinidad, and has been introducedon several Caribbean Islands, including St. Croix in the Virgin Islands (Censky 1988), and on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean (Gonzalez-Gonzalez 1993). The recent discovery of a Pleistocene G. carbonaria on Anguilla of the northern Lesser Antilles (Lazell 1993) may indicate a greater past distribution.
