La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Hancock Park Hancock Park is a city park in the Miracle Mile section of the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. The park's destinations include the La Brea Tar Pits; the adjacent George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries, which displ ...

was formed around a group of

tar pit Tar pits, sometimes referred to as asphalt pits, are large asphalt deposits. They form in the presence of oil, which is created when decayed organic matter is subjected to pressure underground. If this crude oil seeps upward via fractures, co ...

s where natural

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...

(also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the bones of trapped animals have been preserved. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. La Brea Tar Pits is a registered

National Natural Landmark The National Natural Landmarks (NNL) Program recognizes and encourages the conservation of outstanding examples of the natural history of the United States. It is the only national natural areas program that identifies and recognizes the best ...

Formation

Tar pits are composed of heavy oil fractions called

gilsonite Asphaltite (also known as uintahite, asphaltum, gilsonite or oil sands) is a naturally occurring soluble solid hydrocarbon, a form of asphalt (or bitumen) with a relatively high melting temperature. Its large-scale production occurs in the Uinta ...

, which seeps from the Earth as oil.

Crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...

seeps up along the 6th Street Fault from the

Salt Lake Oil Field The Salt Lake Oil Field is an oil field underneath the city of Los Angeles, California. Discovered in 1902, and developed quickly in the following years, the Salt Lake field was once the most productive in California; over 50 million barrels of o ...

, which underlies much of the Fairfax District north of

. The oil reaches the surface and forms pools, becoming asphalt as the lighter fractions of the petroleum

biodegrade Biodegradation is the breakdown of organic matter by microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi. It is generally assumed to be a natural process, which differentiates it from composting. Composting is a human-driven process in which biodegradati ...

or evaporate. The asphalt then normally hardens into stubby mounds. The pools and mounds can be seen in several areas of the park. This seepage has been happening for tens of thousands of years, during which the asphalt sometimes formed a deposit thick enough to trap animals. The deposit would become covered over with water, dust, or leaves. Animals would wander in, become trapped, and die. Predators would enter to eat the trapped animals and would also become stuck. As the bones of a dead animal sink, the asphalt soaks into them, turning them dark-brown or black in color. Lighter

fractions A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...

of petroleum evaporate from the asphalt, leaving a more solid substance, which then encases the bones. Dramatic fossils of large mammals have been extricated but the asphalt also preserves

microfossils A microfossil is a fossil that is generally between 0.001 mm and 1 mm in size, the visual study of which requires the use of light or electron microscopy. A fossil which can be studied with the naked eye or low-powered magnification, ...

: wood and plant remnants, rodent bones, insects, mollusks, dust, seeds, leaves, and pollen grains. Examples of some of these are on display in the George C. Page Museum.

Radiometric dating Radiometric dating, radioactive dating or radioisotope dating is a technique which is used to date materials such as rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurities were selectively incorporated when they were formed. The method compares t ...

of preserved wood and bones has given an age of 38,000 years for the oldest known material from the La Brea seeps.

History

The Native American

Chumash Chumash may refer to: *Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism *Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California *Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California See also *Chumash traditional n ...

and

Tongva people The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous peoples of California, Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Channel Islands of California, Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people p ...

living in the area built boats unlike any others in North America. Pulling fallen Northern California redwood trunks and pieces of driftwood from the

Santa Barbara Channel The Santa Barbara Channel is a portion of the Southern California Bight and separates the mainland of California from the northern Channel Islands. It is generally south of the city of Santa Barbara, and west of the Oxnard Plain in Ventura Count ...

, their ancestors learned to seal the cracks between the boards of the large wooden plank canoes by using the natural resource of tar. This innovative form of transportation allowed access up and down the coastline and to the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

. The

Portolá expedition thumbnail, 250px, Point of San Francisco Bay Discovery The Portolá expedition ( es, Expedición de Portolá) was a Spanish voyage of exploration in 1769–1770 that was the first recorded European land entry and exploration of the interior of t ...

, a group of Spanish explorers led by

Gaspar de Portolá Gaspar de Portolá y Rovira (January 1, 1716 – October 10, 1786) was a Spanish military officer, best known for leading the Portolá expedition into California and for serving as the first List of governors of California before 1850, Governor ...

, made the first written record of the tar pits in 1769. Father

Juan Crespí Joan Crespí or Juan Crespí (1 March 1721 – 1 January 1782) was a Franciscan missionary and explorer of Las Californias. Biography A native of Majorca, Crespí entered the Franciscan order at the age of seventeen. He came to New Spain ...

wrote,

While crossing the basin, the scouts reported having seen some geysers of tar issuing from the ground like springs; it boils up molten, and the water runs to one side and the tar to the other. The scouts reported that they had come across many of these springs and had seen large swamps of them, enough, they said, to caulk many vessels. We were not so lucky ourselves as to see these tar geysers, much though we wished it; as it was some distance out of the way we were to take, the Governor ortoládid not want us to go past them. We christened them ''Los Volcanes de Brea''
he Tar Volcanoes He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
.

Harrison Rogers, who accompanied Jedediah Smith on his 1826 expedition to California, was shown a piece of the solidified asphalt while at

Mission San Gabriel Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to: Organised activities Religion *Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity * Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...

, and noted in his journal, "The Citizens of the Country make great use of it to pitch the roofs of their houses". The La Brea Tar Pits and Hancock Park are situated within what was once the

Mexican land grant The Spanish and Mexican governments made many concessions and land grants in Alta California (now known as California) and Baja California from 1775 to 1846. The Spanish Concessions of land were made to retired soldiers as an inducement for ...

Rancho La Brea Rancho La Brea was a Mexican land grant in present-day Los Angeles County, California, given in 1828 to Antonio Jose Rocha and Nemisio Dominguez by José Antonio Carrillo, the alcalde of Los Angeles. Rancho La Brea consisted of one square leagu ...

. For some years, tar-covered bones were found on the Rancho La Brea property, but were not initially recognized as fossils because the ranch had lost various animals–including horses, cattle, dogs, and even camels–whose bones closely resemble several of the fossil species. The original Rancho La Brea land grant stipulated that the tar pits be open to the public for the use of the local

Pueblo In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...

. Initially, they mistook the bones in the pits for the remains of

pronghorn The pronghorn (, ) (''Antilocapra americana'') is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed, hoofed) mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America. Though not an antelope, it is known colloquially in North America as the American a ...

(''Antilocapra americana'') or cattle that had become mired. La Brea SW01

In 1886, the first excavation for land pitch in the village of La Brea was undertaken by ''Messrs Turnbull, Stewart & co.''.

Union Oil Union Oil Company of California, and its holding company Unocal Corporation, together known as Unocal was a major petroleum explorer and marketer in the late 19th century, through the 20th century, and into the early 21st century. It was headqu ...

geologist W. W. Orcutt is credited, in 1901, with first recognizing that fossilized prehistoric animal bones were preserved in pools of asphalt on the Hancock Ranch. In commemoration of Orcutt's initial discovery, paleontologists named the La Brea coyote (''Canis latrans orcutti'') in his honor.

John C. Merriam John Campbell Merriam (October 20, 1869 – October 30, 1945) was an American paleontologist, educator, and conservationist. The first vertebrate paleontologist on the West Coast of the United States, he is best known for his taxonomy of ver ...

of the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

led much of the original work in this area early in the 1900s. Contemporary excavations of the bones started in 1913–1915. In the 1940s and 1950s, public excitement was generated by the preparation of previously recovered large mammal bones. A subsequent study demonstrated the fossil vertebrate material was well preserved, with little evidence of bacterial degradation of bone protein. They are believed to be some 10–20,000 years old, dating from the last glacial period.

Excavation of "Project 23" and newly uncovered pits

On February 18, 2009, George C. Page Museum announced the 2006 discovery of 16 fossil deposits that had been removed from the ground during the construction of an underground parking garage for the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

next to the tar pits. Among the finds are remains of a

saber-toothed cat Machairodontinae is an extinct subfamily of carnivoran mammals of the family Felidae (true cats). They were found in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Europe from the Miocene to the Pleistocene, living from about 16 million until ...

dire wolves The dire wolf (''Aenocyon dirus'' ) is an extinct canine. It is one of the most famous prehistoric carnivores in North America, along with its extinct competitor ''Smilodon''. The dire wolf lived in the Americas and eastern Asia during the L ...

bison Bison are large bovines in the genus ''Bison'' (Greek: "wild ox" (bison)) within the tribe Bovini. Two extant and numerous extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American bison, ''B. bison'', found only in North Ame ...

, horses, a giant

ground sloth Ground sloths are a diverse group of extinct sloths in the mammalian superorder Xenarthra. The term is used to refer to all extinct sloths because of the large size of the earliest forms discovered, compared to existing tree sloths. The Caribbe ...

turtle Turtles are an order of reptiles known as Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked tu ...

snail A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastro ...

clam Clam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve molluscs. The word is often applied only to those that are edible and live as infauna, spending most of their lives halfway buried in the sand of the seafloor or riverbeds. Clams have two she ...

millipedes Millipedes are a group of arthropods that are characterised by having two pairs of jointed legs on most body segments; they are known scientifically as the class Diplopoda, the name derived from this feature. Each double-legged segment is a resu ...

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

, gophers, and an

American lion ''Panthera atrox'', better known as the American lion, also called the North American lion, or American cave lion, is an extinct pantherine cat that lived in North America during the Pleistocene epoch and the early Holocene epoch, about 340,0 ...

. Also discovered is a nearly intact

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, ...

skeleton, nicknamed Zed; the only pieces missing are a rear leg, a vertebra, and the top of its skull, which was sheared off by construction equipment in preparation to build the parking structure. These fossils were packaged in boxes at the construction site and moved to a compound behind Pit 91, on Page Museum property, so that construction could continue. Twenty-three large accumulations of tar and specimens were taken to the Page Museum. These deposits are worked on under the name "Project 23". As work for the public transit D Line is extended, museum researchers know more tar pits will be uncovered, for example near the intersection of Wilshire and Curson. In an exploratory subway dig in 2014 on the

Miracle Mile Miracle Mile may refer to: Places in the United States * Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, a district of Los Angeles * Miracle Mile (Coral Gables), a shopping area in Coral Gables, Florida * Miracle Mile (Manhasset), New York, a premium sh ...

, prehistoric objects unearthed included

geoducks The Pacific geoduck ("gooey-duck"; ; ''Panopea generosa'') is a species of very large saltwater clam in the family Hiatellidae. The common name is derived from the Lushootseed ( Nisqually) word . The geoduck is native to the coastal waters of t ...

sand dollars Sand dollars (also known as a sea cookie or snapper biscuit in New Zealand, or pansy shell in South Africa) are species of flat, burrowing sea urchins belonging to the Order (biology), order Clypeasteroida. Some species within the order, not qui ...

, and a from a pine tree, of a type now found in

Central California Central California is generally thought of as the middle third of the state, north of Southern California, which includes Los Angeles, and south of Northern California, which includes San Francisco. It includes the northern portion of the S ...

's woodlands.

George C. Page Museum

In 1913,

George Allan Hancock George Allan Hancock (July 26, 1875 – May 31, 1965) was the owner of the Rancho La Brea Oil Company. He inherited Rancho La Brea, including the La Brea Tar Pits which he donated to Los Angeles County. He also developed Hancock Park, Los Angeles ...

, the owner of

, granted the

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the largest natural and historical museum in the western United States. Its collections include nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history. This large col ...

exclusive excavation rights at the Tar Pits for two years. In those two years, the museum was able to extract 750,000 specimens at 96 sites, guaranteeing that a large collection of fossils would remain consolidated and available to the community. Then in 1924, Hancock donated to LA County with the stipulation that the county provide for the preservation of the park and the exhibition of fossils found there. The George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries, part of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, was built next to the tar pits in Hancock Park on

Wilshire Boulevard Wilshire Boulevard is a prominent boulevard in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, extending from Ocean Avenue in the city of Santa Monica east to Grand Avenue in the Financial District of downtown Los Angeles. One of the principal ...

. Construction began in 1975, and the museum opened to the public in 1977. The area is part of urban Los Angeles in the

Miracle Mile District Miracle Mile is a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California. It contains a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard known as Museum Row. It also contains two Historic Preservation Overlay Zones: The Miracle Mile and the Miracle Mile North HPOZ ...

. The museum tells the story of the tar pits and presents specimens excavated from them. Visitors can walk around the park and see the tar pits. On the grounds of the park are life-sized models of prehistoric animals in or near the tar pits. Of more than 100 pits, only Pit 91 is still regularly excavated by researchers and can be seen at the Pit 91 viewing station. In addition to Pit 91, the one other ongoing excavation is called "Project 23". Paleontologists supervise and direct the work of volunteers at both sites. As a result of a design competition in 2019, the

chose

Weiss/Manfredi Weiss/Manfredi is a multidisciplinary New York City-based design practice that combines landscape, architecture, infrastructure, and art. The firm's notable projects include the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park, the Brooklyn Botanic Ga ...

over

Dorte Mandrup Dorte Mandrup-Poulsen (born 28 July 1961) is a Danish architect. Founder and Creative Director of the architectural practice Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter A/S that has approximately 60 employees. The practice is based in Copenhagen, Denmark and is behi ...

and

Diller Scofidio + Renfro Diller has several uses including: People with the surname *Barry Diller (b. 1942), American businessman *Burgoyne Diller Burgoyne A. Diller (January 13, 1906 – January 30, 1965) was an American abstract painter. Many of his best-known w ...

to redesign the park, including by adding a 3,281-foot-long pedestrian walkway framing Lake Pitt.

IUGS geological heritage site

In respect of it being the 'richest paleontological site on Earth for terrestrial fossils of late Quaternary age', the

International Union of Geological Sciences The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of geology. About The IUGS was founded in 1961 and is a Scientific Union member of the Inte ...

(IUGS) included the 'Late Quaternary asphalt seeps and paleontological site of La Brea Tar Pits' in its assemblage of 100 'geological heritage sites' around the world in a listing published in October 2022. The organisation defines an IUGS Geological Heritage Site as 'a key place with geological elements and/or processes of international scientific relevance, used as a reference, and/or with a substantial contribution to the development of geological sciences through history.'

Flora and fauna

Among the prehistoric species associated with the La Brea Tar Pits are

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

, short-faced bears,

s, and, the state fossil of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, the

(''Smilodon fatalis''). The park is known for producing myriad

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s dating from the last glacial period. While mammal fossils generate significant interest, other fossils, including fossilized insects and plants, and even pollen grains, are also valued. These fossils help define a picture of what is thought to have been a cooler, moister climate in the Los Angeles basin during the glacial age. Microfossils are retrieved from the matrix of asphalt and sandy clay by washing with a solvent to remove the petroleum, then picking through the remains under a high-powered lens. Tar pits around the world are unusual in accumulating more predators than prey. The reason for this is unknown, but one theory is that a large prey animal would die or become stuck in a tar pit, attracting predators across long distances. This

predator trap A predator trap is a natural hazard where prey animals become trapped or incapacitated, and the attracted predators suffer the same fate. More predators, scavengers, insects and birds become attracted to this mounting accumulation of carrion, until ...

would catch predators along with their prey. Another theory is that dire wolves and their prey were trapped during a hunt. Since modern

wolves The wolf (''Canis lupus''; plural, : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large Canis, canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of Canis lupus, subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been reco ...

hunt in packs, each prey animal could take several wolves with it. The same may be true of saber-toothed cats known from the area. The most common animals from this area included dire wolves, saber-toothed cats,

coyotes The coyote (''Canis latrans'') is a species of canis, canine native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. It fills much of the same ecologica ...

ancient bison ''Bison antiquus'', the antique bison or ancient bison, is an extinct species of bison that lived in Late Pleistocene North America until around 10,000 years ago. It was one of the most common large herbivores on the North American continent dur ...

, and Jefferson's ground sloth.

Bacteria

Methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Eart ...

gas escapes from the tar pits, causing bubbles that make the asphalt appear to boil. Asphalt and methane appear under surrounding buildings and require special operations for removal to prevent the weakening of building foundations. In 2007, researchers from

UC Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. Th ...

discovered that the bubbles were caused by hardy forms of

bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...

embedded in the natural asphalt. After consuming petroleum, the bacteria release methane. Around 200 to 300 species of bacteria were newly discovered here.Jia-Rui Chong
"Researchers learn why tar pits are bubbly"
''Los Angeles Times'', May 14, 2007.

Human presence

Only one human has been found, a partial skeleton of the La Brea Woman (1914) Preliminary report on the discovery of human remains in an asphalt deposit at Rancho La Brea, ''Science'' 40: 197–203 dated to around 10,000

calendar year Generally speaking, a calendar year begins on the New Year's Day of the given calendar system and ends on the day before the following New Year's Day, and thus consists of a whole number of days. A year can also be measured by starting on any o ...

s (about 9,000

radiocarbon year Radiocarbon dating measurements produce ages in "radiocarbon years", which must be converted to calendar ages by a process called calibration. Calibration is needed because the atmospheric / ratio, which is a key element in calculating radiocarbo ...

s) BP, (2009) Compilation, calibration, and synthesis of faunal and floral radiocarbon dates, Rancho La Brea, California, ''Contributions in Science'' 518: 1–16 who was 17 to 25 years old at death (1989) A note on the ontogenetic age of the Rancho La Brea hominid, Los Angeles, California, ''Bulletin, Southern California Academy of Sciences'' 88(3): 123–26 and found associated with remains of a domestic dog, so was interpreted to have been ceremonially interred. (1985) Domestic dog associated with human remains at Rancho La Brea, ''Bulletin, Southern California Academy of Sciences'' 84(2): 76–85 In 2016, however, the dog was determined to be much younger in date. Also, some even older fossils showed possible tool marks, indicating humans active in the area at the time.

Saber-toothed cat Machairodontinae is an extinct subfamily of carnivoran mammals of the family Felidae (true cats). They were found in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Europe from the Miocene to the Pleistocene, living from about 16 million until ...

bones from La Brea showing signs of ‘artificial’ cut marks at oblique angles to the long axis of each bone were radiocarbon dated to 15,200 ± 800 B.P. (uncalibrated). If these cuts are in fact tool marks resultant from butchering activities, then this material would provide the earliest solid evidence for human association with the Los Angeles Basin. Yet it is also possible that there was some residual contamination of the material as a result of saturation by asphaltum, influencing the radiocarbon dates.Technical report for power plant construction. CULTURAL RESOURCES.
California Energy Commission, Sacramento, California, December 2000

Gallery

File:Tar and flora.jpeg, Tar and wild flower run within La Brea campus (2014) File:Mammuthus columbi Page.jpg,

Columbian mammoth The Columbian mammoth (''Mammuthus columbi'') is an extinct species of mammoth that inhabited the Americas as far north as the Northern United States and as far south as Costa Rica during the Pleistocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line ...

skeleton from the tar pits, displayed in the George C. Page Museum File:La Brea SW07.jpg,

Scimitar-toothed cat Homotherini is an extinct tribe (or subtribe) of carnivoran mammals of the family Felidae (true cats). The tribe is commonly known as scimitar-toothed cats. These saber-toothed cats were distributed en North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and So ...

display File:La Brea SW04.jpg, Fossil crate (2021) File:La Brea SW03.jpg, Lab technician working on recent specimen ZED (2021) File:La Brea SW02.jpg, Lab technician doing a 3-D scan of a fossil (2021)

References

External links

Page Museum – La Brea Tar Pits

* ttp://gocalifornia.about.com/od/calamenu/a/tarpits.htm Gocalifornia.com: La Brea Tar Pits– ''visitor guide''.
Palaeo.uk: "Setting the La Brea site in context."

NHM.org: Pit 91 excavations
{{authority control Asphalt lakes Fossil parks in the United States Parks in Los Angeles Museums in Los Angeles Natural history museums in California Natural history of Los Angeles County, California Paleontology in California Pleistocene paleontological sites of North America California Historical Landmarks Landmarks in Los Angeles National Natural Landmarks in California Lagerstätten Petroleum in California Pleistocene California Articles containing video clips 1901 in paleontology 1964 in paleontology 20th century in Los Angeles Environment of Los Angeles Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles Wilshire Boulevard First 100 IUGS Geological Heritage Sites