There are lots of newsworthy bones being discovered in our own Wilshire backyard: one camel, one La Brea Condor, 13 saber-tooth cats, 11 teratoms, and more, per the Page Museum’s fascinating blog: www.tarpits.org/blog. The blog gives a simple, mostly pictorial, description of what scientists are digging up in Project 23, named for the 23 boxes full of fossils that were set aside in the recent LACMA-Resnick building excavation. Page Museum scientists and volunteers are finishing up a major part of the main deposit after five years of picking through the finds, millimeter-by-millimeter with their toothbrushes and dental instruments.
Meet Mr. Limpet, not a rock-star like the Harlan’s Giant Ground Sloth (dubbed “George Harrison”), or as endearing as “Little Timmy” the juvenile Mastodon seen above – but nevertheless an “exciting” never-before-seen mollusk species for the Tar Pits site (fragile, freshwater Ferrissia walker.) Nerds rule!
Only few places on the planet can boast such a concentration of glacial period remains – and one of them is right here on Wilshire Boulevard, between Marie Callender’s and the 99Cent Only store.
Larchmont Buzz: How the Mammoth Arrived at La Brea Tar Pits
Larchmont Buzz: You Too Can Be a Paleontologist
I once volunteered for a time at the museum, sorting Sabre Tooth Tiger bones and then another critter. There are boxes & boxes that were excavated eons ago that had never been sorted before. Apparently back in the day crews dug up the bones & rinsed them off with gasoline and put them in boxes.