The lake
The town's heart.
Lagoa Santa is a town about 37 kilometres north-north-east of Belo Horizonte, near Confins international airport, set around the natural lake that gives it its name, in a karst landscape of caves and limestone hills that has made it one of Brazil's most important areas for scientific research. That research began in the nineteenth century with the Danish scientist Peter Wilhelm Lund, known as the father of Brazilian palaeontology, who found fossils of giant Ice Age animals in its caves; he was helped by the botanist Eugen Warming, whose study of the local savanna plants became a model of ecological research. In the 1970s work in the region led to the discovery of «Luzia», among the oldest human remains in the Americas. The town itself dates from about 1733, when the first settlers made their home by the lake. Today visitors stroll around the lake and visit the Annette Laming-Emperaire Archaeology Centre and Praça Dr. Lund, and the town is part of the «Caves Circuit» tourist route.
The town's heart.
Father of palaeontology.
A tourist route.
Lagoa Santa, north of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state
Yes, it lies near Confins international airport.