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La Brea Tar Pits (November 14, 2003, Two)

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Program Summary

At the Page Museum in Los Angeles, work is the pits, and the staff loves it. That’s because the museum is located at the La Brea tar pits, from which more than two million Ice Age fossils representing 650 different species of plant, animal, and insect have been unearthed. The well-preserved remains of mastodons, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, birds, small mammals, and a variety of flora give us a detailed snapshot of the Los Angeles environment of 10,000–40,000 years ago.

“Brea” means tar in Spanish, but that’s a misnomer, because the black liquid that oozes up through the earth is not tar, but oil. What’s the difference? Tar is the result of decaying plant material such as peat moss, while oil is the product of the decay of animals. The seeping oil mixes with soil to form a sticky substance known as asphalt, which acts like flypaper to trap unsuspecting critters that venture into it. The occasional squirrel still gets caught. Why were the Ice Age animals fooled into entering the fatal field? Because the asphalt is covered with a layer of water, which back then attracted birds looking for a place to alight and land creatures looking for a drink. They would get stuck in the asphalt and die of dehydration or starvation.

The sheer number of fossils that have been uncovered at La Brea makes it an extraordinary place. What makes it even more special is that La Brea is smack dab in the middle of the city. You don’t have to travel thousands of miles or spend thousands of dollars to get to some remote excavation—just park your car and spend your lunch hour watching the archaeologists work. You can see the results of their work on display inside the museum, where you can come face to face with the skeletons of some of the most fearsome creatures that ever lived.

Guests

Ken Campbell, curator of ornithology at the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles

Related Links and Resources

CNN.com, August 28, 2000: “Tar Pit Remains Help Rewrite Los Angeles’ Ancient History”

Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits
University of California Berkeley Museum of Paleontology: Localities of the Pleistocene: La Brea Tar Pits

For Discussion:

• Where are the La Brea tar pits located? What kind of fossils have been recovered from them?
• What does “brea” mean in Spanish? Why is it an incorrect name for the pools?
• What’s the difference between tar and oil? What is asphalt?
• What kind of environment do scientists think Los Angeles had during the last ice age? Why did it change?
• What are the modern-day descendants of the tar pit animals?
• Why is the location of the tar pits so unusual?

Activities

It’s the pits! Paleontologists have been digging in Pit 91 at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits since 1915. Students can get the full story about the pit, what’s been found in it, excavation techniques, and preservation methods, visit the museum’s “fishbowl” laboratory, and view some fossils up close. The La Brea Tar Pits Photo Tour gives an extensive tour of the museum inside and out, and students can see artist William Huff’s sculptural renderings of a few of the La Brea site species at Huff and his Sculptures. Students can try their hands at recreating some of the creatures with modeling clay. University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) provides a photograph of the La Brea Tar Pits in 1910, before Los Angeles grew up around them.

Smile for the camera. Learn more about Smilodon (the saber-toothed cat) at Sabre-Toothed Cats, and explore the fascinating Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley.

A mammoth undertaking. Explorations Through Time, from the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology, is a series of Web-based, interactive modules that use paleontology and geology to trace Earth’s history. Each module has lesson plans, activities, and a teacher guide. More activities and suggestions for using paleontology in the classroom, including how to create a paleontology teaching collection, can be found at Learning from the Fossil Record.

Setting the fossil record straight. Archaeology isn’t an Indiana Jones movie. It’s a lot of hard work and dirt. Find out what life is really like for paleontologists at Going Gobi: The Hunt for Fossils in Mongolia (American Museum of Natural History). The hour-by-hour diary is particularly fun.

Stones and bones. The Ice Age, a lesson plan from DiscoverySchool.com, introduces students to the Ice Age and its inhabitants. Though written for grades 9–12, it isn’t too sophisticated for middle schoolers. Making Prehistory (New York Times Learning Network) turns students into archaeologists to create their own excavation site and mock fossil record that supports a real theory about prehistory.

Use the search box below to perform a Google search within any of the specifc sites or general domains mentioned in this Activities section.

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