Brazil museum fire: Prized 'Luzia' fossil skull recovered Published duration 20 October 2018 Related Topics Brazil National Museum fire

media caption Drone footage shows the National Museum totally gutted.

Most of the skull from a prized 12,000-year-old fossil nicknamed Luzia has been recovered from the wreckage of a fire in Brazil's National Museum.

The 200-year-old building in Rio de Janeiro burned down in September, destroying almost all of its artefacts.

But on Friday the museum's director announced that 80% of Luzia's skull fragments had been identified.

The human remains - the oldest ever found in Latin America - were viewed as the jewel of the museum's collection.

The museum staff said they were confident they could recover the rest of Luzia's skull and attempt reassembly.

"They've suffered alterations, damage but we're very optimistic at the find and all it represents," archaeologist Claudia Rodrigues was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

image copyright AFP image caption The remains saved from the rubble were presented to press on Friday

The skull is understood to have been stored in a metal box inside a cabinet, described as a "strategic place", which helped it resist fire damage.

Structural work to secure the historical palace in the Brazilian city is still being carried out almost 50 days on from the fire.

The cause of the blaze - which tore through hundreds of rooms containing more than 20 million artefacts - is still under investigation.

The 2 September fire sparked criticism and protests of the country's government in its aftermath.

image caption Luzia's face was reconstructed by a team at Manchester University in 1999

Luzia's remains were found in a cave in the 1970s in the state of Minas Gerais, north of Rio, by French archaeologist Annette Laming-Emperaire.

Tests suggest the skull and bones belonged to a woman in her 20s who was just under 1.5m (5ft tall) - and they were believed to be the oldest recovered on the continent.