Pterosaurs And Tropical Islands

There has been a lot in the news lately about the fires in Hawaii being fed by "non-native" grasses. This means plants from seeds that were brought by humans to Hawaii, either purposely or inadvertently. As we saw in "Japan's Window On The World", March 2023, there was the "Columbian Exchange" of plants between the eastern and western hemispheres. Plants such as cocoa, tomatoes and, potatoes are from the western hemisphere while plants such as coffee, cotton and, oranges are from the eastern hemisphere.

But no plants are likely native to remote islands like Hawaii. This is my conclusion about how plants originally got to Hawaii, and other remote islands.

This is one of those questions of the ages that does not appear to have been answered but if we give it some thought, the answer becomes clear.

There are many tropical islands in the world with all manner of lush vegetation on them. But how did the plants get there in the first place? How did all of this plant life arrive at a speck of an island, in the middle of the ocean, thousands of km away from any other land?

The tectonic splitting apart of the continents explains why there are plants on all of the continents, except Antarctica. But this does not explain how plants got to remote islands that are volcanic in origin, or atolls formed from coral building up on extinct volcanoes below the surface.

The way I see it, there is really only one sensible answer.

In the days of dinosaurs there were flying creatures, called pterosaurs, that had wingspans like that of aircraft and could fly for thousands of km. There is no need to get into the debate here as to whether pterosaurs should be classified as dinosaurs, or whether they should properly be referred to as pterodactyls. 

Pterosaurs were herbivores, or plant-eaters. Imagine a pterosaur eating it's fill of plants and then flying far out over the ocean. The pterosaur sees an island and makes a stop. Meanwhile, the seeds of the plants that the pterosaur had dined on were proceeding through the pterosaur's digestive system, and end up on the island.

This is how animals on land eat plants, and their fruit, and spread the seeds of the plant around. How else could plants have gotten to remote islands? Then once the island is covered in plants, it becomes a source of food in itself.

This scenario tells us that these creatures must have been able to fly very far, and had good vision. They must have had a good sense of direction, and possibly some type of navigation method. Pterosaurs must have been more intelligent than dinosaur-era creatures are typically made out to be.

Inhabiting these remote islands would keep pterosaurs, their offspring and their eggs, safe from land-based predators like T-rex. There must have been a close connection between pterosaurs and tropical islands.