La Brea Tar Pits...and Encino Man!

On his last day here, Dad and I went to the La Brea Tar Pits.

From Wikipedia: "The La Brea Tar Pits (or Rancho La Brea Tar Pits) are a cluster of tar pits around which Hancock Park was formed, in the urban heart of Los Angeles. Asphaltum or tar (brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years. The tar is often covered with dust, leaves, or water. Over many centuries, animals that were trapped in the tar were preserved as bones. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. The La Brea Tar Pits are now a registered National Natural Landmark." (See Wikipedia for more history)

I have been to the areas surrounding the La Brea Tar Pits area before many times, but didn't realize how close I was. Within the mile surrounding the pits are the CBS studios (where I went to The Price is Right), the Farmer's Market and The Grove, the Petersen Automotive Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They call this area "Miracle Mile".

The main museum at the Tar Pits is called the George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries. Honestly, it's probably a place I will only go once. At least, the museum part. There is so much to see outside of the museum that it makes the $11 entrance fee kind of steep. For a fossil lover like me (I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was a kid), I was kind of geeking out, but for people who don't care so much, you might want to stick to the grounds. There are some self-guided tours that you can do, as well as some guided ones by the naturalists at the museum that are free. Inside the museum is an information desk where you can get the information about the free tours.

Outside the museum is the biggest lake pit. When George C. Page was building his museum, he thought it needed something to draw in crowds in order to compete with Disneyland. So, he created these animatronic mammoths to stick in the lake tar pit. What is funny is that if this were real life, the mammoth in the tar pit wouldn't have been able to turn around to yell for help. :) Oops.

Outside of the museum, we took a tour of Hancock Park. All around the park are these little cages, with spots of tar seeping up out of the ground. Well, technically, it isn't tar. It's asphalt. The oil seeps up through the dirt and creates asphalt. The people who discovered it called it tar, even though it wasn't actually tar. What's REALLY funny is that they called it La Brea, which means "the tar". And it's currently called The La Brea Tar Pits. So, if you translate it, it's called "The The Tar Tar Pits". Gotta love American translating. :)

Next door to the Tar Pits is the Art Museum. They are building a huge parking garage there. However, while they were digging down to pour the foundations, they found a HUGE fossil deposit, containing hundreds of fossils--including the world's largest mammoth fossil! So, they dug it out, and are excavating it on site. You can watch them (again, geeking out here!).

In some of the tar areas, they continually bubble. These bacteria eat the tar, and release methane gas. Just shows that things in it are.....ALIVE!!

After we went around the grounds, we went into the museum. They have some pretty cool fossils in there. Actually, they aren't technically fossils, like dinosaur fossils. Dinosaur fossils are rock. The skeletons found here were encased in tar, and when they are unearthed, they are still bone.

I loved the full mammoth skeleton that they had on display. SO BIG! Put dad underneath it to give some perspective.

California's state fossil: the sabre-toothed cat!

These are some of the wolf fossils that they have unearthed at the different sites.

Rawr.

This is the mammoth tusk that they unearthed from Project 23. It's the only one that they have unearthed that they have been able to keep completely intact.

Finally, I was SO excited to see the fishbowl lab, because it was featured in one of my favorite movies: Encino Man!!  Link, Dave, and Stoney go to the museum for a tour, and Link makes the connection that he is from the Ice Age.

This is from the front of the museum:

A scene from the fishbowl:

This angle looks familiar!

A quick shot of the sabre-toothed cat:

I wish I could explain how much I love this ridiculously campy movie. So when I hung out in the museum, I totally squeed on the inside. :)  Now I need to find the house that they have the big party in at the end...that house is in my neighborhood!