The Tar Pits

We recently spent a fun Saturday in LA at La Brea Tar Pits (http://www.tarpits.org/). There is a museum with many Ice Age fossils on display (from 10,000-40,000 years ago), and outside you can see several areas where the tar is still seeping up from the ground as well as former and current excavation sites. The sticky tar trapped many plants and animals and preserved their fossils, and this place is world-famous for having the largest collection of Ice Age plants and animals. They've recovered a million bones in the past 100 years, and there are an estimated 3 million items (vertabrates, plants, and invertabrates) in the museum's collection. Very educational and so fascinating. We all loved it.

Josh and Seth by the tar lake

Blake

Annie by one of the excavation sites




Watch your step! Throughout the acres-large park around the museum, there are several areas fenced off where the tar has seeped up to the surface. The kids were scared enough of getting stuck in the tar, that it wasn't really an issue having them keep their distance.



Annie



Josh and Seth watching the preservation workers in the "Fish Bowl"

Josh and the saber-tooth cat (not tiger, we learned)--the remains from over 2,000 saber-tooth cats have been found in the tar pits.

Seth and Annie

A few dire wolf skulls representing the several thousand dire wolves in the museum's collection.

The crew

Of course, the place smelled like tar.


I don't know why it took us so long to visit this gem, but it inspired us to take advantage of the many other attractions (beyond amusement parks) in our area.