For Lagoa Santa, a municipality in Goiás see Lagoa Santa, Goiás
Lagoa Santa (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
References
- Charles C. Mann, 1491, Random House, 2005.
Coordinates: 19°38′S 43°53′W / 19.633°S 43.883°W
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