65 million-year-old dinosaurs are very cool, but 10,000 year-old saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths and giant sloths are giving them a run for their money at the remarkable and unique La Brea Tar Pits. The collection of bubbling asphalt pits were the scene during the last four Ice Ages (40,000 to 10,000 years ages) of countless animals being entrapped in the sticky goo. Usually, an herbivore would wander in, sink down and get caught, and its struggle to escape would attract the attention of every predator in the area. Often these predators would get caught while trying to feast on the stuck prey. The Tar Pits are one of the world’s most famous fossil finds, possessing the largest and most diverse collection of extinct Ice Age plants and animals in the world. There are really fun exhibits like a simulation of trying to pull your stuck hoof out of the tar, and you can watch researchers cleaning some of the one million bones recovered from excavations of the pits over the last century. But truly the most fun thing to do is to walk around the parking lot and the rest of the grounds surrounding the museum and discover new tar pits bubbling up everywhere. Try it and you'll see what I mean. www.tarpits.org
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