Thousands of years ago, the Los Angeles landscape was a dangerous place to be. Massive wild animals roamed around this strange land with its exotic plant life, seeking shelter and prey. The Ice Age may have finished, and the wilderness tamed under the skyscrapers of downtown LA, but luckily, visitors can still discover the former inhabitants of this land, 11,000 years on at Hancock Park on the Miracle Mile.
The park contains clusters of tar pits, which proved to be the final resting place for hundreds of now-extinct species, as the thick, sludge-like tar seeped up from the ground. This viscous liquid acted as a preservative and kept bones, teeth, shells, insect exoskeletons and even some plant seeds intact. These have since been extracted from the pits and displayed in this exciting centre.
The unique geological situation at Hancock Park, thanks to the numerous bubbling pools of tar, gives visitors a fascinating insight into life in the Ice Age, which would otherwise have been lost to us. For safety purposes, the pits are all fenced off so that inquisitive visitors don’t suffer the same fate as the animals, but viewing stations are dotted around so you can appreciate them from a safe distance.
This site is an archaeologist’s dream, thanks to the quality of the preservation of the fossils, and scientists have been working here for more than a century. At the Page Museum, you can see real science in action – watch scientists as they clean, identify, tag and put fossil pieces together in the Fishbowl Lab. Many of their finds are on display here too. This veritable prehistoric treasure chest provides a window into Pleistocene and Ice Age California. The museum boasts over a million fossils from more than 650 species, including skeletons of mammoths, sloths, wolves and even a sabre-toothed cat.
The La Brea Tar Pits are located about 11 kilometres west of downtown on Wilshire Boulevard. There is paid parking directly behind the museum on the corner of Sixth Street and Curson Avenue. The museum is open every day with the exception of main holidays.
