A man wearing a giant sponge costume drifted through a sea of tuxedos in Londons Natural History Museum. He might have been out of place on a normal day at the museum. But on the evening of Oct. 4, 2010, the scene was an odd blend of formality and whimsy. A statue of Charles Darwin loomed over the hall, its massive, Gothic stone arches draped in sea-themed decor. A song about sea life played in the background, recorded by a former Talking Heads member and his band specifically for the event.

A man in a smoking tuxedo surveyed it all, feeling like a clown. Camilo Mora was the events featured guest, and the hundreds of scientists, reporters and guests were here to celebrate a discovery that hadnt actually happened a discovery Mora was supposed to have made.

Mora had grown up as a peasant farmer in Colombia in the 1970s, and studied biology at the University of Windsor in Canada. At the age of 34, he became a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University in Canada. The fancy museum party was not a place he felt particularly comfortable.