La Brea Tar Pits
Right in the middle of downtown Los Angeles is the largest
collection of Ice Age fossils in North America. Everything from the kinds of
plants that inhabited the area to the smallest beetle, to the largest mammoth
are preserved in the sticky tar.
Some of the animals preserved in the La Brea Tar pits can still be found in
California or in North America. Only the larger animals such as the bears,
mammoths, mastodons, sabertooth cats, horses, camels, and llamas can no longer
can be found alive today.
Even the skeleton of a native woman was found within the tar!
The oldest fossil is about 100,000 years old with the youngest being just
8,000. The fossil are preserved when animals and plants are traped with in the
sticky tar and slowly sink down. There the flesh decays leaving only bone.
Unlike most fossils, the La Brea fossils are still organic.
La Brea is also called a "predator trap" do to the large number of
carnivores like the Dire Wolf and the sabertooth cat that were trapped in the
tar when trying to scavenge a larger prey animal that was stuck in the tar. The
large number of bones was not one event but rather many animals dyeing in the
tar over long periods of time. Page
Museum Reference
Harris, John M. And George T. Jefferson. 1985.Rancho La Brea: Treasures of
the Tar Pits. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles Science Series 31. pgs 1-85.
See Also
La Brea Tar Pits (Berkeley)