La Brea Tar Pits



 

Right smack in the middle of Los Angeles is the most famous ice age tar pit in the world. We were down there for a temple trip a couple weekends ago, so we drove over to check it out.

 

 

 

The museum costs $5 for kids 12 and under, $9 for students, and $12 for adults. It wasn't huge, but there was plenty of cool things to see. It took us about a hour.



 

 

 

The saber-tooth tiger, just one of many extinct animals displayed in the museum. Predators greatly outnumber herbivores at the pits because an animal would get stuck in the tar (which is actually oil), and it would look like easy prey to meat eaters. Then they would get stuck too.

 

I didn't know there used to be camels around here. There were also horses, which is interesting because some people have faulted the Book of Mormon because it mentions horses here. Hmm...
 

I especially liked the woolly mammoths. They were huge! No, there aren't any dinosaurs, since they were long gone by the time the tar pits came along.

The most common animal found is the extinct dire wolf. They have found over 2000 in the pits - here's a display of 400 skulls.

 

And here's a dire wolf skeleton. What's unique about tar pits is that they preserve the bones by completely covering them with the tar, like shellac. So they are the actual bones and not mineralized fossils.
 

They also have what they call a fishbowl lab. They are still uncovering fossils from the tar pits, and we can watch the palaeontologists at work, sorting and preparing their findings for display. I thought this looked lot a rather boring job, but my boys were fascinated.

Levi was especially interested in the animatronics. He was a little concerned that the woolly mammoth would get him, but we assured him it wasn't real. The saber tooth attacking the sloth was pretty awesome too.

 

Just as we were finishing up in the museum, there was an announcement that an outside tour was about to begin. So we did that too. The tour guide was very good and entertaining, and we learned a ton.

 

 Then we walked over to see Pit 91. Apparently they number the excavation sites.

There was a little building overlooking the pit.

 

The colored flags each identify a different animal.

 

We had to watch where we stepped because there were just random puddles of tar oozing up all over. You can see how the leaves and sticks could easily camouflage it to an unsuspecting animal. Dave bore his testimony the next day comparing the tar pits to Satan's sneaky traps. I missed it because I was home with a stomach virus. It's been a sickly month for us - 2 1/2 weeks of a stomach virus followed by a respiratory virus. We were glad everyone was healthy during our 2 days in L.A.!