Nov 7, 2023
Emily Hart takes us (way) back in time this week, to a very
different Colombia - one well before the arrival of human beings…
but in the process of looking back, we’ll also be looking forwards
- to what the future on this planet might look like.
We have with us some of the team behind "Hace Tiempo" - an
incredible book on Colombia’s paleontological past: Colombia’s
leading palaeontologist, Carlos Jaramillo, Paleo-botanist at EAFIT
University, Camila Martínez, and science communications specialist
at Parque Explorer Luz Helena Oviedo.
This illustrated book - now in its second edition - is a
paleontological journey through the country’s past, and winner of
an Alejandro Ángel prize, one of the most important awards for
scientists in Colombia. More than 30 Colombian palaeontologists,
working all over the world, contributed to the book, which is
available free online –
http://repository.humboldt.org.co/handle/20.500.11761/36213 – the
physical version is for sale through the website of the Humboldt
Institute, a key partner in its creation.
Colombia is enormously fossil-rich and with a huge variety of
habitats past and present Understanding Colombia’s ancient flora
and fauna is key to understanding the country’s incredible
biodiversity today, which is the product of millions of years of
evolution, but in the alarmingly short term, is threatened by
climate change and the accelerating global extinction of
species.
Uniquely, the project also gives readers in Colombia a
paleontological resource which relates to the land around them.
Rather than the well-known dinosaurs like T-Rex or triceratops,
this book presents prehistoric animals peculiar to Colombia, like
the 6-tonne giant sloth which lived here 50 million years ago,
giant turtles the size of a cars, or the megalodon which roamed
Colombia’s waters, the biggest shark to ever exist – bigger than a
school bus.
The Titanoboa, meanwhile, was a vast snake weighing over a tonne,
which roamed 60 million years ago in the then-tropical jungles of
La Guajira, ancestor to the anaconda and the boa constrictor, its
body was 13 metres long and – at a cross section - the size of a
bicycle wheel. It is the largest snake ever to roam the earth. The
Titanoboa was discovered by Carlos himself only a few years ago -
after analysing tons of rocks extracted from the Cerrejón mines
still active in La Guajira today.
The new and expanded edition of the book - just out - includes a
new chapter on Perijasaurus Lapaz, a long-necked herbivorous
Colombian dinosaur discovered in 2018 in the Serranía del Perijá.
Its name pays homage both to where it was discovered and to the
2016 peace agreement with the FARC, hence lapaz - which allowed
palaeontologists to explore that region for the first time in
decades.
So today we'll be talking all about what Colombia looked like a
very long time ago, what happened since, what fossil records can
teach us about climate change, and whether humans are in fact, as
Carlos will argue, the least successful species ever to live on
Planet Earth.