In September 2021, NBC launched a new TV show called La Brea. Shae watched the first few episodes and I caught some of it but, to be completely honest, it was kinda crap.
The concept had potential. A huge sinkhole appeared at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, with many people seemingly falling to their deaths. What actually happened was that they fell into a portal that transported back in time 10,000 years to the La Brea area in prehistoric times.
The problems with the show were that some of the actors weren’t great and the writing was even worse, so Shae gave up on it after a few episodes. However, one thing the TV show was successful in doing was piquing our interest about La Brea Tar Pits & Museum which is open to the public. As a result, when in Los Angeles last month we decided to pay it a visit.
La Brea Tar Pits covers a larger area of Los Angeles than I was expecting. There’s a museum building, but most of the site is outdoors.
The fact that most of La Brea is outdoors has a couple of benefits. First, it’s completely free to visit the outdoor exhibits and that’s where you see most of the stuff, so it only costs you money if you want to visit the museum. The museum is definitely worth checking out, but it’s awesome having the outdoor area be free if you’re on a strict budget seeing as LA isn’t a cheap place to visit. If you need to park at La Brea, that costs $15.
The second benefit of most of the exhibits being outdoors is that it means La Brea Tar Pits is pet-friendly. Leashed dogs are allowed to join you on all the paths that take you around the tar pits – the only place they can’t come in to is the museum.
As a result, we brought our dog Truffles with us so that she could soak up all the history too! Shae and I both wanted to visit the museum, so Shae went in there first while I walked Truffles around all the outdoor exhibits and tar pits. Once Shae was done, I headed inside the museum while Truffles did another loop of the tar pits with Shae.
The first thing we saw was Lake Pit which is where the first fossil at La Brea was found. It’s a small lake containing water, but which has “tar” hidden beneath the water. You can’t see the “tar”, but you can see bubbles in various places of Lake Pit which show where it’s rising from underground (more about the “tar” in a moment).
Places like Lake Pit were successful in trapping many animals including Columbian mammoths. Mammoths would wade into the water to drink, but they’d then become trapped by the “tar”. Excavations have shown that the majority of mammoths trapped at La Brea were males. The reason for this is that male Columbian mammoths normally lived alone and so if they got stuck they were likely out of luck. Females on the other hand lived with others which meant they’d often be able to get assistance when stuck.
One end of Lake Pit has a mammoth exhibit showing what this might have looked like.
After checking out Lake Pit, we started wandering around to explore the other tar pits. As you might expect, the tar pits are all fenced off both for people’s safety and to preserve conditions.
Fossils dating tens of thousands of years apart have been found within the same tar pits at La Brea due to how long those pits have been around trapping creatures.
The “tar” isn’t always immediately obvious, but in some parts you’ll see puddles of it bubbling to the surface.
Considering the name of the site, we were surprised to learn that there’s no tar in the La Brea Tar Pits. Instead, the “tar” is in fact asphalt which is forced up from a large oil field beneath Los Angeles. As a result, it sometimes smells like road construction as you walk around La Brea.
Researchers no longer do excavations at most of the outdoor tar pits, although you can still view them. Each of those pits has information boards sharing some of what those researchers have learned over time.
For example, researchers have had a hard time putting together whole bodies from fossils found on the site due to most of the creatures missing bones. It’s thought that after getting stuck in the tar pits, other creatures would notice the animals in distress, tear off their limbs and carry them away to eat.
Although most of La Brea’s tar pits are no longer excavated, there are a couple of exceptions. One of those is Pit 91 where you can look down at the pit and see how researchers are able to safely excavate fossils without getting stuck in the asphalt themselves!
There was a sign at Pit 91 showing all of the fossils they’ve found in that pit over the years:
The other exception is Project 23. It’s named Project 23 because there are 23 large crates containing literally millions of fossils that researchers are working through.
Something unexpected that we noticed while wandering around La Brea is that asphalt doesn’t only rise to the surface in the tar pits. At various random locations, you can spot small patches of asphalt which are normally marked by a green cone.
Once Shae had finished checking out the museum, we tag teamed. She came out to walk around with Truffles while I went inside to check out the museum’s exhibits.
One of the most interesting exhibits was an interactive one where you get to experience what it was like getting stuck in the tar pits.
Thankfully you don’t have to stand in asphalt yourself, but you do get to try pulling up handles that are stuck in asphalt. It was much harder than I was expecting and can see how it would’ve been easy for animals to get stuck in the tar pits.
There were lots more exhibits inside including fossils of prehistoric animals like Columbian mammoths and Harlan’s Ground Sloths, as well as other archaeological finds.
Some of the most common fossils found in the La Brea Tar Pits belonged to the dire wolf, an animal that’s now extinct. The museum has a wall featuring 404 of their skulls which isn’t as creepy as it might sound!
Another exhibit shows what researchers have to deal with. There’s a block of bones from Pit 81 which doesn’t look like it would be fun to work through. The patience that must be needed to carefully extract each fossil is unimagineable.
Final Thoughts
La Brea Tar Pits & Museum is well worth checking out when visiting Los Angeles. It’s a fascinating site sharing more about prehistoric finds from the site. The fact that it’s free to explore all the outdoor exhibits and is pet-friendly makes it even more fantastic and significantly more interesting than the TV show inspired by the site 😉
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