La Brea Tar Pits

While we were in LA waiting for the results of our Covid tests so we could fly back to Tahiti, we spent several hours at the La Brea Tar Pit museum.

I remember popping “tar bubbles” as a kid. On really hot summer days, the asphalt on our street would bubble up and we would see how many bubbles we could pop with our toes. Sometimes the gooey tar would stick to my feet, but I never really thought about what it was or where it came from.

Tar pits are formed when heavy crude oil seeps up to the earth’s surface. If the tar deposit is deep enough, animals can become stuck in it and die. Over thousands of years, hundreds of animals were trapped and fossilized in the La Brea Tar pits in San Diego.

The museum at the La Brea Tar Pits showcases fossils recovered from the adjacent tar pits. The total collection contains over 3.5 million specimens, including mammoths and mastodons, dire wolves, birds, insects and seeds.

  • The Tar Pits in 1910. Oil derricks can be seen in the background.
  • The La Brea Tar Pits Museum
  • Illustration of several species getting mired in the tar pits
  • Columbian mammoth skeleton from the tar pits, displayed in the Museum
Source: Wikipedia entry for the La Brea Tar Pits.
Carved bas-relief over the entrance to the museum, depicting animals whose fossilized bones were found in the tar pits. You can see the entire bas-relief on the front of the building in the Wikipedia picture above.
Close-up of the mammoth on the bad-relief.
Sabre-tooth tigers.
Really interesting twisted tree.
Steve in the tree.

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