Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais

Lagoa Santa (Holy Lagoon) is a Brazilian municipality and region in the state of Minas Gerais.

[1] The Danish palaeontologist Peter Wilhelm Lund, known as the father of Brazilian paleontology, 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').

[2] The municipality contains 56% of the 2,004 hectares (4,950 acres) Sumidouro State Park, created in 1980, which protects the cave where Lund made his discovery of the "Lagoa Santa Man".

[3] 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.