Carlos Jaramillo – 120 million years for a single man

The ceremony to award the honorary doctorate to paleobotanist Carlos Jaramillo was a true reflection of his personality. 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 makeshift setup that suits him well,” says Pierre-Olivier Antoine ofISEM, referring to a man who is more of an adventurer than a man of the academy.“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 made his way 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 tropical flora and landscapes in 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 more than 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 makes it possible to date and identify the presence of numerous plants, thereby reconstructing past ecosystems and helping us understand the evolutionary processes 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 man of the academy but a networker, Carlos Jaramillo collaborates with teams from around the world. Pierre-Olivier Antoine has been working with him since 2008. This collaboration led the University of Montpellier to welcome him in September 2019 as a visiting professor. The invitation ultimately lasted two years, as the challenges 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 alone for the *UM*. “He has thus fully and willingly contributed to the university’s international reputation in the field of evolutionary ecology,” said Philippe Augé, president of the *UM *, in his remarks at 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 at that time, only to be rebuilt over the following millions of years in favor of a new plant kingdom that had previously been marginal: the angiosperms.

Instinct

At ISEM, Carlos Jaramillo has won unanimous approval.“Carlos talks with everyone, attends all the seminars, and willingly shares his thoughts,” says an admiring Pierre-Olivier Antoine, 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 becoming undocumented.” Such social skills are equally valuable in the field, where collecting samples in sometimes tense sociopolitical contexts requires earning the trust of local communities. “In the field, people size us up right away. If we come across as colonizers, 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 spot, even under difficult conditions, where the samples will contain the markers we’re looking for.” This is a valuable talent for teams embarking 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, which measured 14 meters in length. Fortunately, this titan went extinct… 60 million years ago!