, an Antarctic
flowering plant Charles Darwin, 23 years old as he started his biological research in neighbouring
Patagonia,
Tierra del Fuego and the
Falklands in 1832, noted (with some inaccuracy in his distances): The coastal areas of Livingston Island are home to a selection of vegetation and animal life typical for the northern
Antarctic Peninsula region, including
fur,
elephant,
Weddell, and
leopard seals, and
chinstrap,
gentoo,
Adélie and
macaroni penguins. Several other seabirds, including
skuas,
southern giant petrel and
Antarctic terns, nest on the island during the summer months. Spanish biological research has identified 110 species of
lichens and 50 of
mosses on a territory of just at the
Spanish base on
Hurd Peninsula, the highest species diversity recorded from any single Antarctic locality. ==History== , discovered on 19 February 1819 It was only during the nineteenth century that any land was discovered in what is now the ‘political’ territory of Antarctica, and that land happened to be Livingston Island. The English merchant
William Smith in his brig , while sailing to
Valparaíso in early 1819, strayed from his route south of
Cape Horn and on 19 February sighted
Williams Point, the northeast extremity of Livingston. That was the first land ever discovered south of 60° south latitude, in what is now the
Antarctic Treaty area. Russian explorer
von Bellingshausen commented on Smith's discovery: Several months later Smith revisited the
South Shetlands, landed on
King George Island on 16 October 1819 and claimed possession for
Britain. In the meantime, a Spanish
man-of-war had been damaged by severe weather in the
Drake Passage and sank off the north coast of Livingston on 4 September 1819. The 74-gun ship
San Telmo commanded by Captain Joaquín Toledo was the flagship of a Spanish naval squadron en route to
Callao to fight the independence movement in
Spanish America. The officers, soldiers and sailors on board the ship, including the squadron's
Peruvian-born leader Brigadier
Rosendo Porlier, are the first recorded people to die in Antarctica. While no one survived, some of her spars and her anchor-stock were found subsequently by sealers on
Half Moon Beach at Cape Shirreff. Argentine archaeological research has identified 26 human-built shelter structures on Byers Peninsula alone. There were some women among the early inhabitants of the island, as evidenced by a 1985 discovery of the grave of a 21-year-old woman of mixed European and Native American descent at
Yamana Beach on Cape Shirreff, dated to the early 19th century. Remains of
huts and sealer artefacts are still found on Livingston, which possesses the second greatest concentration of historical sites in Antarctica (after
South Georgia). The memory of that epoch survives, other than in archaeological finds, also in a dozen preserved ship logs and as many memoirs, such as the candid story published in 1844 by one
Thomas Smith who sailed to Livingston in the sealer
Hetty under Captain Ralph Bond during the 1820/21 season. Sealing was replaced by another rush of unsustainable commercial exploitation during the 20th century – Antarctic
whaling. This time Livingston Island was not directly involved, although the southernmost
Hektor Whaling Station was operated by Norway on nearby Deception Island from 1912 to 1931. A significant milestone in Livingston Island's history was the
Antarctic Treaty signed in 1959 and entered into force in 1961, which effectively placed the region south of 60° south latitude under the joint governance of the consultative (voting) parties to the treaty, providing in particular for the freedom of scientific exploration. The treaty left the personnel of the Antarctic bases under their respective home countries’ jurisdiction, and essentially froze the existing sovereignty claims. (Livingston, in particular, was claimed by Britain in 1820 with
letters patent of annexation promulgated in 1908, by Chile in 1940 and by Argentina in 1942 — claims not recognized, among others, by the US and Russia, which have formally reserved their rights to claim Antarctic territories.) Since then, the evolving
Antarctic Treaty System has been providing an increasingly comprehensive legal framework for all Antarctic-related activities, including
environmental protection and
exploitation of marine living resources, and has proved an example of uniquely successful international cooperation. On 15 September 1976, a
Lockheed SP-2E Neptune (0644/2-P-103) of the
Argentine Air Force disappeared on a flight from
Río Grande after making radio contact at 12:15. The plane was found crashed into Monte Bernard here eight days later, with all 11 occupants killed. ==Toponymy==