The La Brea Tar Pits in downtown Los Angeles are a rich fossil bed dating back to 38,000 years ago. The tar comes from an underground oil deposit, trapping animals and preserving them as fossils. Megafauna and existing organisms have been found, making it a popular tourist destination with a museum.
The La Brea Tar Pits are an extremely rich lagerstätte (German: storage place, resting place), or fossil bed, located in what is now downtown Los Angeles, California. La Brea means “the tar” in Spanish, so the “tar pits” in the name are actually a bit redundant.
Many thousands of fossils have been extracted from the La Brea Tar Pits, all dating from the Pleistocene and Holocene. Animals and plants began becoming trapped in pits around 38,000 years ago and received a steady supply of new victims until they were turned into a tourist destination less than a century ago.
The tar comes from an underground oil deposit which escapes to the surface. The surface becomes covered with leaves and dust, forcing the animals to wander from time to time without knowing it, sometimes getting trapped. Predators probably gathered around the pits in ancient times, looking for a free meal, and got stuck in turn. While unpalatable to the victims, this fossilization method is among the best, preserving microscopic pollen grains and animals as large as mammoths.
Fossils found in the La Brea Tar Pits include numerous extinct Pleistocene megafauna: ancient bison, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, mastodons, mammoths, short-faced bears, ground sloths, even the North American camel and llama. Existing organisms are also found in large numbers, including cougars, bobcats, coyotes, gray wolves, raccoons, skunks, tapirs, weasels, and numerous insects and plants. A partial human skeleton has even been found, a Native American woman who lived about 9,000 years ago.
The La Brea Tar Pits remain one of Los Angeles’ most famous landmarks. They are accompanied by scale models of mammoths, and the associated museum contains models of sloths, saber-toothed cats, and other animals, as well as numerous mounted fossils.
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