Location of Lagoa Santa within Minas Gerais
(
Holy Pond)is a municipality and region in the state of
Minas Gerais,
Brazil. It is located 37 km north-northeast from
Belo Horizonte and belongs to the mesoregion Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte and to the microregion of Belo Horizonte.
The Danish palaeontologist
Peter Wilhelm Lund discovered a cave filled with human bones (15 skeletons) and
megafauna (very large mammals) dating to the
Pleistocene era.
Eugen Warming assisted Lund 1863-1866, and described the flora of the area and the adaptations of the plants to the hazards of
cerrado - drought and fire - in a work that still stands as a paradigm of ecological study
('Lagoa Santa').
A century later, in the 1970s, French archeologist
Annette Laming-Emperaire carried out excavations in the area and discovered the oldest human fossil in Brazil, over 11 thousand years old, given the nickname
Luzia.
See also
