More of La Brea Tar Pits- Los Angeles

 Happy Saturday everyone. We have some snow arriving today, (a general 4-8 inches or 10-20 centimeters) and it's our first bigger storm of the season, so maybe we'll have a white Christmas after all. 

Due to some interest about the tar pits, I'm going to focus my post back at the La Brea Tar Pits in downtown LA. I was surprised as we drove into downtown  we passed several oil wells, but it all makes sense when you think there are bubbling tar (or really asphalt) pits here. And yes Chris, they do have an odor.

If you read this Iris, here are some of Henry's cousins in this top photo. There's another Henry further in the post.

All of the large outside areas were fences off, but I managed a few photos. For this first one you can see the methane bubbling up.

I like this next photo for 2 reasons. First you can see how the tar pits are located right in a developed area. Also with the addition of the large animal models, you can see how mammoths and mastodons could get stuck  and then die in the pits. They weren't the only animals to be stuck. There were also dire wolves and  saber toothed cats  (as well as others) which could smell the decaying flesh of the these large animals and came in for lunch. When they went in the sticky tar to eat, they too got stuck in the tar pits also.

Here's a brief history page from the Tar Pits themselves if you're interested in reading about their history: Le Brea Tar Pits story.

No one was digging for bones in this pit the day we were there. 

I found these cones over soft spots in the park around the museum interesting.

You can see all the boxes of fossils still to unpack and process from their digs in the pits.

Inside the museum, there was a glass fronted lab where they cleaned and worked on fossils.

And here's either a scientist or volunteer who was working the morning we were there.

And it's not just the bones that tell a lot of information, but sometimes the microfossils tell even more.

A view of what the Tar Pits could have resembled back 10,000 years ago.

And yes, we used to have lions (similar to African lions) in North America.  

And I'll finish up my photos with a few more skeletons, starting with this extinct horse. I still find it fascinating that animals like horses and camels evolved in North America, and then went extinct here. All the modern horses we have (and camels also) were brought back to North America by humans.

They also had this cool exhibit that showed elephant/mammoth/mastodon evolution.

And a mammoth molar, adapted for grinding.

They've even found some bird fossils, including this giant vulture. (Sorry for the light reflection across the photo.)

And a couple of dire wolf skeletons.

There's nothing to give you a scale on their size, but they were the size of a pony or a small horse.

And for those of you more interested in plants than animal bones, they had a lovely indoor/opened to the outside conservatory.

You could also walk around it from  outside on the roof the building. In this next photo I am looking slightly downward and across.

And finally for today, a few views from  when we were in the park that surrounds the Tar Pits Museum of LA.

That was my pick for our 2 days in LA. My husband's pick was a movie studio tour. For his pick we visited the Warner Brother's studio, which ended up being quite fun also.  If you're interested I can share that with you another day or two.. 

As I said in my other LA post, there was a lot to do in the city, and one of these days, we need to go back. Two days didn't even scratch the surface.  

You've all shared such nice comments on my trip photos; thanks so much. 

Have a great rest of your weekend.