New Tar Pits Discovery Reminds Us The Past Wasn't Entirely Different

[Omaha Steve]

Source: KCET

by Chris Clarke

You've almost certainly heard of the famous La Brea Tar Pits, those redundantly named fossil treasure troves in Hancock Park near the associated Page Museum. Oozing sticky tar to entomb hapless wildlife for at least 38,000 years, the tar pits have preserved a range of improbable former residents of the Los Angeles Basin ranging from sabretoothed cats to giant ground sloths to mammoths to leafcutter bees.

Wait, leafcutter bees? That's right: a paper published this week in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE describes a remarkable find of fossilized insects whose long-distant descendants may still be buzzing around your California garden.

It's a reminder that while present-day California is sadly deficient in cave bears, dire wolves, and many of the other animals that roamed its slopes during the Ice Ages, many of the Pleistocene California animals entombed in Wilshire asphaltum are still everyday sights around the Golden State.

In fact, it may surprise you that most of the fossils excavated from the tar pits belong to species that are still roaming the earth. Aside from a few of the very large mammals and one very large bird, the tar pits' bestiary would fit right in in the wild mountains north of Los Angeles: coyotes, bobcats, red-tailed hawks, and mule deer.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/rewild/invertebrates/new-find-in-la-brea-tar-pits-reminds-us-the-past-wasnt-entirely-different.html

---

http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/rewild/assets_c/2014/04/Megachile_gentilis,_female,_side,I_SD6531-thumb-600x451-72123.jpg

The leafcutter bee Megachile gentilis | Photo: Smithsonian Institution Entomology Department

[postulater]

1. LaBrea was the one place I wanted to go when we went to

Los Angeles a few years ago.

I was not disappointed.

A wall the size of most of a basketball court full of Dire Wolf skulls .....

And as we walked the grounds there was a freshly trapped squirrel stuck in the tar beginning the process that has happened to millions of creatures over thousands of years.

Nature is awesome, and right in the middle if the city.

[kwassa]

2. I'm shocked by this, as I used to live close by ...

that they say the LaBrea tar pits are in Hancock Park. This is a Los Angeles news source saying this? Where are they from, New Jersey?

Hancock Park, an old money area of LA, is about a mile to the east. The LaBrea tar pits are in the area known as the Miracle Mile.

The tar pits are in and around the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Page Museum. If any of you watched that fine motion picture "Volcano" you witnessed the spectacular destruction, in special effects, of this area of town, my old stomping grounds. The volcano in question erupted in the park between the two museums, a park I frequented.

Other notable local features include Fairfax Ave., the old Jewish district, the original LA Macys, and the Orbachs across Wilshire that was later converted to the Peterson Car Museum. After a party there, the rapper Biggie Smalls was shot and killed in his car near Macys. Just to the north is Farmer's Market, CBS Television City, the Beverly Center, etc. etc. etc.

[Kablooie]

4. There is the district Hancock Park and also the park Hancock Park

The grassy area around the Page museum is called Hancock Park.
And of course you're right the district is the Miracle Mile.

The LA May Co. (Sorry, not Macys) on Wilshire and Fairfax is going to become the new Motion Picture Academy Museum.

http://www.oscars.org/academymuseum/

They will be keeping the old classic gold front of the department store.

[longship]

3. The Page Museum is fucking awesome.

The tour is unforgettable. The tar is bubbling up all over that area of LA, right smack dab in the middle of the city. There are dig pits all over the area where bones are dug up every day and dozens of graduate students, post-grads, and volunteers toiling away. The museum itself is a research laboratory with activities surrounded by exhibits. It is a pretty phenomenal place and it is never the same twice.

Well worth a visit.

[dhill926]

6. ah…thanks for the photos...

used to live in this area, walked by it every day….

[DBoon]

5. Have they found any Paleolithic screenplays?

Not too far from Hollywood...