Carlos Jaramillo – 120 million years for one man

The ceremony to award the title of Doctor Honoris Causa to paleobotanist Carlos Jaramillo was very much in keeping with his character. On April 6, 2023, there was no decorum or gown—due to the campus blockade—but rather a classroom and a polo shirt.  "A makeshift solution that suits him well," says Pierre-Olivier Antoine ofISEM, referring to a man who is more of an adventurer than a courtier. "Carlos Jaramillo called out to the young people blocking the campus," recalls his colleague from the University of Montpellier. "I know about barricades, I'm Colombian. And I am wholeheartedly with you. But I need to getthrough."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 to the summit of the Andes, the 50-year-old has reconstructed the evolution of American tropical flora and landscapes over the last 120 million years. " He is the only paleontologist to cover such a long period," says Pierre-Olivier Antoine. "His creation of a sequential table covering more than 100 million years, which makes it possible to date and characterize an environment based on a pollen assemblage, represents a colossal work of synthesis," explains the Montpellier-based paleontologist. Pollen can be used to date and identify the presence of numerous plants, thereby reconstructing past ecosystems and understanding evolutionary phenomena on a geological timescale. This knowledge sheds light on our understanding of current changes, as Carlos Jaramillo pointed out 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 to the University of Montpellier welcoming him as a visiting professor in September 2019. The invitation will ultimately last two years, as the difficult Covid period has prompted the Colombian to extend his stay in France. During these two years, the "hyperactive" man—as his colleagues describe him—has published nearly 40 scientific articles, of which he is the sole author for UM. "He has therefore fully and willingly contributed to the university's international reputation in the field of ecology and evolution," said UM President Philippe Augé in his speech at the ceremony. In one of his publications, which appeared in Science in April 2021, the specialist in the evolution of Amazonian-Andean ecosystems shows 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 period, was largely decimated, only to rebuild itself over the following millions of years in favor of a new plant kingdom that had previously been marginal: that of angiosperms.

Flair

At ISEM, Carlos Jaramillo was unanimously appreciated. "Carlos interacts with everyone, participates in all seminars, and willingly shares his thoughts," says Pierre-Olivier Antoine, an admirer who cannot help but contrast the Colombian researcher's friendliness with his difficulties in extending his residence permit: "He came very close to becoming undocumented." Such social skills are also valuable in the field, where collecting samples in sometimes tense socio-political contexts requires gaining the trust of local populations.  "In the field, people size us up immediately. If we arrive in a colonialist mindset, things go badly... With Carlos, I've never had a problem," says Pierre-Olivier Antoine. He adds: "Carlos also has a flair, an ability to spot, in difficult conditions, where the samples will contain the markers we are looking for." This is a valuable talent for teams that set off 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 became extinct... 60 million years ago!