The Mystery Tomato of Surtsey Island

If you get to explore a recently formed volcanic island, you're actually exploring new territory, which is one of the wonderful things about them. Nowadays, it's nearly hard to accomplish that. So you can imagine there was considerable excitement when scientists arrived at a volcanic island in 1969 that had only been around for a few years at that point. And when a tomato plant was seen growing there, the situation became more confusing.

A small group of researchers discovered a plant that shouldn't have been growing there and contacted gst Bjarnason, whose responsibility it was to keep an eye on the island southeast of Iceland's plant life. The two-year-old island couldn't have native tomatoes, so even if it appeared to be a tomato when he arrived, it couldn't have been.

After shifting some rocks during his further investigation, Bjarnason found the tomato growing out of a soft object, which he subsequently poked before recognizing what had happened. At some time, a scientist on the island had eaten tomatoes and then used the restroom right there. Bjarnason had just prodded a dung pile when a seed managed to pass through their digestive system unharmed. He packed everything into bags and departed.