In early August 2017, a team of scientists from the University of São Paulo (USP), the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil and France’s Development Research Institute (IRD) began drilling boreholes and analyzing sediment removed from the Colônia Crater, a depression located in southern skirts of São Paulo City, with a diameter of 3.6 km, depths of up to 450 m and an area of 10.2 km2. Their aim was to reconstruct the past 1 million years of the biosphere and Atlantic Rainforest biome in that area.