All Angles Creatures
Testudines · TestudinidaeEntry 8,851 of 21,572
Goode’s Thornscrub Tortoise, Gopherus evgoodei

Reptilia · Testudines

Gopherus evgoodeiEdwards, Karl, Vaughn, Rosen, Meléndez-Torres, Murphy, 2016

Goode’s Thornscrub Tortoise

Photograph by Taylor Edwards, Alice Karl, Mercy Vaughn, Philip Rosen,…, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons

A ground-dwelling, day-active tortoise from the Nearctic region, reaching 209 mm nose to tail.

ReptiliaTestudinesTestudinidaeGopherus

Grows to
209mm
greatest recorded
Active
Diurnal
Lives up to
4.8years
Lives
Terrestrial
Body length across Testudinidae

Longer than only 31% of all tortoises anyone has measured.

31% of 45 species are smaller69% larger
99.8 mmthe whole family, smallest to largest1,200 mm

The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 99.8 to 1,200 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.

What is known

19 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.

Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.

Standing in the world

Conservation status
Vulnerable
Population trend
Decreasing

The animal itself

Colour on the back
Brown
Pattern on the back
Uniform
Pupil
Round
Venomous
No
Fangs
None
Longest recorded life
4.8years

Size

Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
209mm8.25 in

total length, tail included — Colston, Kulkarni, Jetz, and Pyron, 2020, BMC Evol. Biol., 20:81

How it lives

Active
Diurnal
Where it lives
Terrestrial
Habitat
Forest, Shrubland
Region
Nearctic

Breeding

Reproduction
Oviparous
Clutches in a year
1.3per year

Naming and history

Subspecies
No
Described by
Edwards, Karl, Vaughn, Rosen, Meléndez-Torres, Murphy
Moved to another genus · since it was first described
No
Described in
2016

What nobody knows

These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.

  • Still living
  • Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
  • Length snout to vent · adult female mean
  • Length snout to vent · adult male mean
  • Length snout to vent · adult mean
  • Female length · mean, nose to tail
  • Length nose to tail · adult male mean
  • Length nose to tail · adult mean
  • Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
  • Largest female · snout to vent
  • Largest male · snout to vent
  • Largest female · shell length
  • Largest male · shell length
  • Hatchling length · snout to vent
  • Hatchling length · nose to tail
  • Largest juvenile · snout to vent
  • Largest juvenile · shell length
  • Egg length
  • Egg width
  • Body mass · greatest
  • Body mass · a typical adult
  • Body mass · adult female, mean
  • Body mass at hatching
  • Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
  • Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
  • Diet
  • Eats arthropods
  • Eats vertebrates
  • Eats plant matter
  • How it hunts
  • How the young develop
  • Gestation or incubation
  • Average clutch
  • Smallest clutch recorded
  • Largest clutch recorded
  • Mean clutch · smallest reported
  • Mean clutch · largest reported
  • Clutches a year · fewest
  • Clutches a year · most
  • First breeds from · youngest recorded
  • First breeds by · oldest recorded
  • Hatchling length · smallest recorded
  • Hatchling length · largest recorded
  • Age at first breeding · female
  • Mature from · youngest recorded
  • Mature by · oldest recorded
  • Size at maturity · smallest recorded
  • Size at maturity · largest recorded
  • Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
  • Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
  • Limbs
  • Sex decided by
  • Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
  • Red List criteria
  • Biome
  • Active season · shortest recorded
  • Active season · longest recorded
  • Density · lowest recorded
  • Density · highest recorded
  • Home range · largest recorded
  • Suborder
  • Infraorder
  • Type locality
  • Active in
  • Mainland or island
  • Lowest it lives · above sea level
  • Highest it lives · above sea level
  • Range size

Others in Testudinidae

Take this data

Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.

This species as JSON · the whole dataset

Cite this page

The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Gopherus evgoodei. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gopherus-evgoodei

@misc{gopherus_evgoodei_2026,
  title  = {Gopherus evgoodei},
  author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gopherus-evgoodei}
}

Sources

  1. Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.
  2. Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
  3. Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.