Carlos Jaramillo – 120 million years for a single man

The ceremony to award an honorary doctorate to paleobotanist Carlos Jaramillo was a true reflection of the man himself. On April 6, 2023, there was no formal ceremony or academic gown—due to the campus blockade—but rather a classroom and a polo shirt. “A DIY look that suits him well,” says Pierre-Olivier Antoine ofISEM, describing a man who is more of an adventurer than a courtier.“Carlos Jaramillo spoke to the young people blocking the campus,” recalls his colleague from the University of Montpellier. “I know all about barricades; I’m Colombian. And I’m with you all the way. But I need to get through.”And he got through.”

Researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, Carlos Jaramillo is, more specifically, a palynologist. Using pollen collected from the Amazon basin to the peaks of the Andes, the 50-year-old has reconstructed the evolution of the flora and tropical landscapes of the Americas over the past 120 million years. “He is the only paleontologist to cover such a long period,” notes Pierre-Olivier Antoine.“His creation of a sequential timeline spanning over 100 million years—which allows us to date and characterize an environment based on a pollen assemblage—represents a colossal synthesis,” explains the Montpellier-based paleontologist. Pollen does indeed allow us to date and identify the presence of numerous plants, thereby reconstructing past ecosystems, but also to understand the evolutionary phenomena that have occurred on a geological timescale. This knowledge sheds light on our understanding of current changes, as Carlos Jaramillo noted in his speech.

Nearly 40 articles in two years

Not a courtier but a networker, Carlos Jaramillo collaborates with teams from all over the world. Pierre-Olivier Antoine has been working with him since 2008. This collaboration led the University of Montpellier to invite him to serve as a visiting professor in September 2019. The invitation ultimately lasted two years, as the difficult period of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the Colombian to extend his stay in France. During those two years, the “hyperactive” scholar—as his colleagues describe him—published nearly 40 scientific articles, all of which he authored solely on behalf of UM.“He has thus fully and willingly contributed to the university’s international reputation in the field of evolutionary ecology,” UM President Philippe Augé told him during the ceremony. In one of his publications, which appeared in April 2021 in Science, the specialist in the evolution of Amazonian-Andean ecosystems demonstrates that the profound crisis at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (which led to the near-extinction of the dinosaurs) is the origin of the region’s current biodiversity. The flora, dominated by conifers during the Cretaceous, was largely decimated and then reconstituted over the following millions of years, giving rise to a new plant kingdom that had previously been marginal: that of the angiosperms.

A knack

At ISEM, Carlos Jaramillo has won everyone over.“Carlos talks to everyone, attends all the seminars, and is always happy to share his thoughts,” says Pierre-Olivier Antoine, a fan who can’t help but contrast the Colombian researcher’s friendliness with the difficulties he faced in renewing his residence permit:“He came very close to being undocumented.” This interpersonal skill is equally valuable in the field, where collecting samples in sometimes tense socio-political contexts requires earning the trust of local populations. “In the field, people size us up immediately. If we arrive acting like colonists, things go badly… With Carlos, I’ve never had a problem,” says Pierre-Olivier Antoine. He adds:“Carlos also has a knack, an ability to pinpoint, even under difficult conditions, where the samples will contain the markers we’re looking for.” A valuable talent for teams setting out on missions more than 10,000 km from their laboratory, with the risk of returning empty-handed. Among his major discoveries, Carlos Jaramillo counts the largest snake ever identified, Titanoboa, measuring 14 meters in length. Fortunately, this titan went extinct… 60 million years ago!