The (Danish) father of Brazilian paleontology

When fire engulfed the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro in September 2018, one of the first laments was for the loss of Luzia’s skull, the only remaining trace of the oldest female skeleton to be discovered in the Americas. The artifact was first encountered in the 1970s, by Annette Laming Emperaire during a French-Brazilian archeological expedition at the Lapa Vermelha site in Minas Gerais state.

However, one month after the museum blaze and during the search for “survivors” among the debris, archeologists miraculously came across the skull, which had remained largely intact. But almost as valuable as Luzia’s cranial fossil are the remains of the oldest hominid in Latin America — encountered in nearby Lapa Vermelha by a different European archeologist.

Known as the Lagoa Santa Man, named after the town where the skeleton was first unearthed, the discovery of the ancient fossils was the work of Danish scientist Peter Wilhelm Lund, some 100 years before Luzia’s skull was encountered.

Until today, Lund is known as the father of Brazilian paleontology, having discovered more than 12,000 fossils in the caves of Lagoa Santa region, which led to crucial findings about the history of the Pleistocene period.

In addition to Lagoa Santa Man, which indicated human presence at the site more than 10,000 years ago, Lund discovered remains of saber-toothed tigers, ground sloths, and glyptodons, among other extinct species. 

In the words of paleontologist Castor Cartelle, curator of the Natural Sciences Museum of the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais...