Wednesday, July 22, 2015

La Brea Tar Pits

While visiting LA for the crossfit games, I took off on Wednesday morning to see the La Brea tar pits. The tar pits and accompanying museum are amazing....

It seems so unreal that even with Los Angeles all around, the methane is still boiling to the surface of the ponds and tar is still oozing to the surface just as it has been doing for 40,000 years. During those 40,000 years, millions of animals have gotten stuck in the ooze....The pits have layers upon layers of bones.  The museum showcases a trove of fossil bones recovered from this site. On display are some complete skeletons of now extinct animals from this time period such as saber-toothed cat, mammoth, short-faced bear, giant ground sloth, dire wolf, etc

The grandkids would love this place.

Recreated scene of mammoths at tar pits
 
Mammoth mired in the tar...notice the water boiling in the background...that's methane
 
The story of Goo

Where the goo comes from.

Another tar pit

Excavating tar pit

Another tar pit

Giant Sloth

Saber-toothed Cat

Lab Volunteers that are separating out bone fragments

I thought this is an extra nice way to display these skeletons - vulture standing over prey

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