TARRED AND WEATHERED

The first thing you think of when you awaken on a sunny California morning is, "God, I could really go for the smell of some intense bubbling, oozing asphalt!" So what do you do? You take the kids to the famous La Brea Tar Pits, is what. I had never been there and thought well, it's probably kind of hokey and silly, but hey...beats giving the Corporate Rat any money down in Anaheim. So off we went. I actually was surprised that there is STILL TAR there! I was thinking the ooze would have long ago been all oozed out, but NO. It was still there, and the paleontologists were still excavating more fossils, as budgets allow. Cool.

 

 

 

I can't imagine the work -- people get down in this reeking tarry mess and goop out one little bit at a time by hand. You gotta REALLY love fossils, man.

Snuffy and pals aren't going to be making it over to Pink's for a chili dog, I fear.

 

 

Off to go inside the Page Museum.

 

The Harlan's Ground Sloth looks silly licking a tree, but I still wouldn't have messed with him. Dude was huge.

I found out that animals really didn't get catastrophically stuck in the tar all that often. The kind of event where something big gets mired in a few inches of the asphalt and dies of dehydration/starvation, then something comes to feed off that and gets stuck and then more and more little things come and get stuck happened maybe once in a decade, but that was enough to leave the La Brea site with all these amazing fossils. We all enjoyed this exhibit on how to appreciate how MUCH IT SUCKED to be stuck in tar. Yes, it was really difficult to pull that up.

 

 

 

Saber-toothed justice and tiny omniscience.

 

"Knock knock!" Who's there?" "Extinction!" "Extinction who? "Extinction for YOU HOO!"

 

Dire wolf skulls and an American Lion.

 

I liked seeing the indoor workspace as well. I would lose my mind doing such detailed and delicate work, but I think for others it must be both thrilling in discovery and somehow relaxing too. The way it looks here doesn't seem too different than how it was done in the early 20th Century when the La Brea site was first excavated. They don't use massive amounts of gasoline to take the tar off anymore, though.

 

 

 

Oh, Mr. Bear Thing, you have a problem. And Snuffy can't help you because he's a painting.

 

 

 I saw this guy staggering down Sunset last night. Los Angeles Man lives!

We all dug the morning spent at the Tar Pits, learned some stuff, and Mr11 got a giant gummy snake at the museum store. Take that, Disney!