La Brea Tar Pits
La Brea Tar Pits Introduction
The La Brea tar pits have been well-known for over a century. Before the rise of European settlers, local Indian tribes used the tar to caulk canoes and waterproof tents. As the Industrial Revolution took off the early 1900s, the tar pits attracted oil men, as asphaltum is often associated with petroleum. Then,
[w]hen W. W. Orcutt, the original organizer of the geological department of Union Oil of California, reexamined the area in 1901, he discovered "a vast mosaic of white bones" on the surface of a pool of asphalt--the skeleton of a giant ground sloth, a huge armored animal that had been extinct for millions of years. As paleontologists subsequently probed the La Brea tar pits, it became obvious that the heavy asphalt had trapped numerous prehistoric animals and, more important, had then perfectly preserved their skeletons. It was perhaps the richest paleontological find ever made. (Franks and Lambert 1985, p. 3)
In the early 1920s, Los Angeles was just beginning to develop into a major city thanks to its port and the rise of the Hollywood motion picture industry. Thanks to the massive waves of construction, a massive cache of prehistoric animal skeletons was discovered in some asphaltum bogs on Rancho La Brea property soon to be enveloped by an expanding Los Angeles. By the mid-1920s an area of twelve square city blocks, the La Brea Tar Pits (which had been discovered a more than a decade prior), the largest discovered fossil depository in North America, had been set aside as a county park. From it over the years hundreds of skeletons were being recovered under the supervision of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, established at Exposition Park in 1913. Among the Pleistocene fossils found and put on display: mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, the giant ground sloth and dire wolf, the California lion, weighing over a thousand pounds, the ground stork, the golden eagle (800 of these) and one
The La Brea tar pits have been well-known for over a century. Before the rise of European settlers, local Indian tribes used the tar to caulk canoes and waterproof tents. As the Industrial Revolution took off the early 1900s, the tar pits attracted oil men, as asphaltum is often associated with petroleum. Then,
[w]hen W. W. Orcutt, the original organizer of the geological department of Union Oil of California, reexamined the area in 1901, he discovered "a vast mosaic of white bones" on the surface of a pool of asphalt--the skeleton of a giant ground sloth, a huge armored animal that had been extinct for millions of years. As paleontologists subsequently probed the La Brea tar pits, it became obvious that the heavy asphalt had trapped numerous prehistoric animals and, more important, had then perfectly preserved their skeletons. It was perhaps the richest paleontological find ever made. (Franks and Lambert 1985, p. 3)
In the early 1920s, Los Angeles was just beginning to develop into a major city thanks to its port and the rise of the Hollywood motion picture industry. Thanks to the massive waves of construction, a massive cache of prehistoric animal skeletons was discovered in some asphaltum bogs on Rancho La Brea property soon to be enveloped by an expanding Los Angeles. By the mid-1920s an area of twelve square city blocks, the La Brea Tar Pits (which had been discovered a more than a decade prior), the largest discovered fossil depository in North America, had been set aside as a county park. From it over the years hundreds of skeletons were being recovered under the supervision of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, established at Exposition Park in 1913. Among the Pleistocene fossils found and put on display: mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, the giant ground sloth and dire wolf, the California lion, weighing over a thousand pounds, the ground stork, the golden eagle (800 of these) and one
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