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
Theobroma bicolor Theobroma bicolor Theobroma bicolor, known commonly as the Mocambo tree, jaguar tree, balamte, or pataxte, among various other common names, is a tree in the genus "Theobroma" (family Malvaceae), which also contains the better-known "Theobroma cacao" (cocoa tree). It is known from Central and South America, including stretches of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. "T. bicolor" is the only species in the "Rhytidocarpus" section of "Theobroma". It was described by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland in 1808. "T. bicolor" can reach a height of 3–8 metres in open fields, although in the understories of forests