La Brea Tar Pits and the Page Museum

Since I went to Hollywood for Amy, she (and Kim!) had to go to the La Brea Tar Pits for me!

It was facinating!  There have been hundreds of thousands of fossils pulled out of the tar pits since they were first excavated in 1913.

This is Zed, the most complete Mammoth found. (Poor Zed had arthritis!)

Kim is as tall as a polar bear. (And Brooke is as tall as a brown bear!)

 I am as tall as a grizzly bear.

 Amy is as tall as the short nosed bears found in the pits.

This is a case filled with 500 Golden Eagle leg bones-the Golden Eagle is one of 140 different species of birds that have been found in the pits.  And one of over 600 different different species of animals found in the pit-including camels! (Second camel sighting of the weekend.)

The animals waded into the pits to get to water and got stuck and died of starvation or from predators looking for an easy meal.  The predators then got stuck themselves,

which led to a big jumbled mess of bones in the pits over tens of thousands of years.

Pit 91 is temporarily closed but is still an active dig site.

This is the lake pit, which was quarried for asphalt and has now filled with water.  Methane gas bubbles up through the pit and makes the asphalt seem to boil.

What Kim and Amy just heard from this post:
"blah blah blah blah blah!"
Although Amy did say it wasn't as horrible as she expected. ;)