No single place on Earth might be more associated with the Pleistocene than the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Naturally occurring asphalt has been seeping from the area's ground for tens of thousands of years, trapping and preserving all forms of ancient life in its sticky embrace.
At the end of the Ice Age, twelve thousand years ago, the flat coastal planes of Southern California were teeming with now extinct mega fauna like mammoths and giants sloths. When the asphalt, mistakenly called tar, was excavated for commercial purposes starting in the 19th century, quarry men noticed numerous bones in the material. Scientists eventually discovered that many of these bones were those of Pleistocene behemoths.
The grounds are now preserved in a park-like setting with at least one working excavation site. Asphalt still seeps from fissures and abandoned pits, while methane gas bubbles up from some of the more watery pools. A museum with a working lab displays many of the recovered bones and fossils, along with life-size skeletons and models of of the extinct animals.
Sabre-toothed cats and mastodons once roamed the Americas, but they along with scores of other animals died out shortly after man's arrival on the continents at the end of the Pleistocene when a warming climate ended the last Ice Age. The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum gives you a chance to see what fascinating prey might have attracted these human hunters here in the first place. It also reminds us what dramatic climate change timed with man's relentless exploitation can forever destroy.
At the end of the Ice Age, twelve thousand years ago, the flat coastal planes of Southern California were teeming with now extinct mega fauna like mammoths and giants sloths. When the asphalt, mistakenly called tar, was excavated for commercial purposes starting in the 19th century, quarry men noticed numerous bones in the material. Scientists eventually discovered that many of these bones were those of Pleistocene behemoths.
The grounds are now preserved in a park-like setting with at least one working excavation site. Asphalt still seeps from fissures and abandoned pits, while methane gas bubbles up from some of the more watery pools. A museum with a working lab displays many of the recovered bones and fossils, along with life-size skeletons and models of of the extinct animals.
Sabre-toothed cats and mastodons once roamed the Americas, but they along with scores of other animals died out shortly after man's arrival on the continents at the end of the Pleistocene when a warming climate ended the last Ice Age. The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum gives you a chance to see what fascinating prey might have attracted these human hunters here in the first place. It also reminds us what dramatic climate change timed with man's relentless exploitation can forever destroy.
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| Museum entrance. |
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| Harlan's ground sloth. |
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| American mastodons. |
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| Sabre-toothed cat. |
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| Merriam's giant condor. |
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| Model of baby mastodon skull in observation pit. |
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| Seeping asphalt on the grounds. |
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| View of excavation pit with individual bones flagged. |
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| Methane bubble in asphalt. |
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| Model of Colombian mammoth. |
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| Model of sabre-toothed cat attacking ground sloth. |
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| Model of American lion. |
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