Arturo Gómez-Pompa Professor of Ecology and Botany in the Faculty of Sciences of the National University in the Institute of Biology at UNAM. These distinctive and academic positions have gained Gómez-Pompa a prestigious reputation in the ecological world. He discovered the use of Theobroma cacao, or the tree of chocolate, as ancient crops in rejolladas and cenotes within the Yucatán Peninsula. This confirmed his hypothesis on the anthropogenic origins of the Mayan forests and advanced future research in the domestication of tropical trees. Gómez-Pompa created a database for the Flora of Veracruz project in the 1960s that is still utilized to this
Madeira-Tapajós moist forests excelsa" and "Duckeodendron cestroides". At one time the endemic tree "Polygonanthus amazonicus" grew near Maués, the western limit for the emergent "Dinizia excelsa" and the eastern limit for the "Theobroma cacao". The Tapajós basin is the eastern limit of "Theobroma microcarpum". The "Physocalymma scaberrima" has red hardwood used by furniture makers. The montane forests of the upper Marmelos and middle Tapajós hold "Hevea camporum", "Euterpe longibracteata", "Huberodendron ingens" and "Brachynema ramiflorum". Further south in Mato Grosso there are forests in the transition between the Amazon and cerrado biomes. 183 species of mammals have been reported, including 90 bat species and