La Brea Tar Pits and Museum (California, USA)

La Brea Tar Pits and Museum occupies a rare middle ground: it is a museum built around the place where its collection is still being found. Beneath Hancock Park, natural asphalt preserved a detailed record of Ice Age Los Angeles, while the Page Museum brought excavation, preparation, display, and research together on one campus. The museum building is currently closed for renovation, while many outdoor areas of Hancock Park and active excavation sites remain accessible.

Why La Brea Tar Pits Is Different

Many natural history museums display fossils transported from distant field sites. Here, the galleries, collections rooms, public laboratory, and active digs occupy the same fossil locality. That direct chain from ground to research shelf is the museum’s defining difference.

Rancho La Brea holds the world’s largest collection of late Pleistocene fossils preserved in asphaltic sediments. More than 3.5 million specimens document a changing Los Angeles Basin across roughly 50,000 years.^[Ref-3] Among California museums, few make the methods of field paleontology so visible: visitors can move from an outdoor excavation to fossil cleaning, cataloging, and finished displays without leaving the site.

How Asphalt Preserved Ice Age Los Angeles

The “Tar” Is Natural Asphalt

The familiar name says tar, but the sticky material is natural asphalt, a heavy form of petroleum. Oil migrated upward from deposits beneath the Los Angeles Basin. Lighter components evaporated, leaving a dense residue at the surface. Sand and gravel later covered many seeps and their fossil contents.

The basin’s geology made this possible. During the Miocene, tectonic change stretched the region and formed a deep structural basin that accumulated marine sediment. The museum notes that these deposits reach depths of up to six miles in places.^[Ref-4]

A Shallow Trap, Not a Deep Pool

Large animals did not need to sink into a deep black lake. A warm, sticky layer only a few inches deep could hold their feet and legs. A trapped herbivore then attracted predators and scavengers, which explains why carnivores are unusually abundant in the mammal record. Small mammals, birds, and insects could be caught at the surface much like insects on adhesive paper.^[Ref-5]

At the Lake Pit, a bubble can rise through the water with a soft gulp. There is a petroleum smell, traffic on Wilshire, and mammoth figures standing in the lake. The scene feels urban because it is; the geologic process never left the city.

What Fossilization Means Here

La Brea bones are not mineralized in the usual way associated with many dinosaur fossils. Asphalt entered and stained them, producing the characteristic brown color sometimes called “La Brea Brown.” The collection preserves more than large skeletons. Seeds, pollen, wood, leaves, beetles, shells, fish bones, rodent teeth, and other small remains help reconstruct temperature, moisture, vegetation, waterways, and food webs.

Fossils and Displays of the Page Museum

Dire Wolves and The Carnivore Record

The Dire Wolf Wall turns abundance into something immediately readable: 400 fossil skulls arranged across one display. Remains from more than 3,600 individual dire wolves have been recovered, making Aenocyon dirus the most frequently found mammal at the Tar Pits.^[Ref-6]

Stand close and the wall stops looking decorative. Tooth wear differs. Skull proportions repeat, then vary. It is a population-level archive presented through individual animals.

Saber-toothed cats, coyotes, American lions, short-faced bears, and other carnivores add to this record. Ancient bison are the most common large herbivores, represented by at least 300 individuals. The mammal collection also includes mammoths, mastodons, horses, camels, tapirs, and three kinds of giant ground sloth.^[Ref-7]

Zed the Columbian Mammoth

Project 23 produced the near-complete skeleton of an adult male Columbian mammoth nicknamed Zed. About 80 percent of the individual survives. The renovation plan calls for Zed to be displayed as an articulated skeleton when the reimagined museum opens.^[Ref-22]

Birds, Plants, and Small Fossils

The large mammals are only the visible edge of the collection. Rancho La Brea preserves about 140 bird species, including 23 extinct species. Roughly 60 percent of the recorded birds are daytime birds of prey, a pattern consistent with animals being drawn to trapped carcasses.^[Ref-8]

Plant remains have identified 158 species through wood, seeds, cones, leaves, and pollen. Those specimens indicate that late Ice Age Los Angeles was cooler and wetter than the region today, with evidence for strongly seasonal winter rainfall.^[Ref-9] A seed can answer a climate question that a mammoth femur cannot. Even very small specimens can carry detailed environmental evidence.

Excavation and Fossil Preparation

Project 23

Construction of an underground LACMA parking garage exposed 16 fossil deposits in 2006. To preserve them, crews built 23 large wooden boxes around the deposits and moved them to the Tar Pits campus. The salvage operation also recovered 327 buckets of fossil-bearing material. Excavation of those boxes became Project 23, whose fossil count reaches into the millions and may eventually double the existing collection.^[Ref-10]

Fieldwork is methodical. Excavators establish a grid and datum point, record each fossil’s depth and orientation, photograph it, and preserve the surrounding matrix for later sorting. Hammers and chisels serve hard, fossil-free sediment; dental picks take over near bone. And the smallest discoveries may remain hidden until the matrix reaches a microscope.

Pit 91 and More Than a Century of Work

Pit 91 was first excavated in 1915 and reopened in 1969 with finer sampling methods. Rather than collecting only large, complete-looking bones, researchers retained sediment and small remains so they could study the whole ecosystem. More than 100 excavations have taken place across the Tar Pits since the early 1900s.

The Fossil Lab

Before the renovation closure, the public Fossil Lab showed what happens after removal from the ground. Preparators soften hardened asphalt by soaking bones overnight in n-propyl bromide, then remove remaining clay and silt with water and foam-tipped applicators. Cracked specimens may be stabilized with Paraloid B-72, a transparent conservation adhesive. Microfossils under one centimeter are sorted from processed sediment grain by grain. The indoor lab is not currently open to general visitors.^[Ref-11]

A memorable scale shift happens at the glass. One moment, a mammoth tusk fills the workbench; the next, a preparator bends over a tray looking for a mouse tooth. That tiny tooth may reveal more about habitat than the room’s largest bone.

History of Rancho La Brea and The Page Museum

• 1875: William Denton published the first notice identifying extinct fauna from Rancho La Brea.
• 1901: Geologist W. W. Orcutt and F. M. Anderson recognized the bones as fossils of extinct animals and began collecting.
• 1913–1915: Los Angeles County excavations recovered about 750,000 specimens from 96 sites.
• 1924: George Allan Hancock donated 23 acres to Los Angeles County for a protected park where the fossils would be preserved and displayed.
• 1963–1964: Rancho La Brea became one of the country’s early National Natural Landmarks.
• 1977: The George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries opened beside the fossil deposits.
• 2015: The public name changed to La Brea Tar Pits and Museum.
• 2022: The International Union of Geological Sciences included the site in its first group of 100 Geological Heritage Sites.

The museum building was deliberately set into the earth, leaving sloping grass-covered walls around it. A 10-foot-high fiberglass frieze by sculptor Manuel Paz wraps the upper structure with Ice Age plants and mammals. The architecture made the museum part of Hancock Park rather than a detached display hall.^[Ref-12]

Visiting During the 2026–2028 Renovation

The Page Museum building is temporarily closed, so indoor exhibitions, the regular museum admission program, and the former daily museum schedule are paused. Current visits center on the outdoor Tar Pits landscape, portions of Hancock Park, active excavation areas, and separately ticketed experiences.^[Ref-21]

• Outdoor access: Many areas of Hancock Park and active outdoor excavation sites remain open. Construction can create phased closures, so available walking paths and outdoor features may change.^[Ref-13]
• Insider Tour: The current behind-the-scenes program is scheduled for Fridays at 11:00 a.m. and Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., with dates subject to change. The tour includes access to excavation work, researchers, and fossil sorting and is limited to visitors age seven and older.^[Ref-23]
• Parking: The South Curson Avenue museum car park is closed to the general public. Reserved parking there is limited to Insider Tour ticket holders with proof of purchase; other visitors should use legal street parking, nearby garages, or public transportation.^[Ref-24]
• Reopening: The institution anticipates reopening the full campus, including the Page Museum, in 2028. This remains a project target rather than a guaranteed public opening date.

Who Will Find The Museum Most Rewarding?

• Families and school-age visitors who learn best by watching a real scientific process rather than seeing finished displays alone.
• Paleontology and geology enthusiasts interested in taphonomy, asphaltic preservation, Ice Age mammals, and urban fieldwork.
• Climate and ecology readers drawn to pollen, seeds, insects, small vertebrates, and long environmental records.
• Los Angeles history followers interested in how a fossil locality, public park, museum, and modern city developed on the same ground.
• Short-stay Museum Row visitors who want to pair natural history with nearby art, film, craft, or automotive collections.

This is not a dinosaur museum. Its strongest story belongs to the late Pleistocene, much closer to the present, when mammoths, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, ancient bison, and many species still living today shared Southern California.

Similar Museums and Fossil Sites

• The Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, South Dakota: An accredited museum built over an active indoor Ice Age dig. More than 60 mammoths have been unearthed there. Unlike La Brea’s asphalt-trap assemblage, its fossils remain in a prehistoric sinkhole deposit.^[Ref-14]
• Waco Mammoth National Monument, Waco, Texas: A protected Pleistocene locality where visitors see Columbian mammoth fossils in their original position. Its defining record is a nursery herd, while La Brea preserves a far broader community shaped by recurring asphalt entrapment.^[Ref-15]
• Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park, Royal, Nebraska: An active dig with more than 200 complete skeletons and in-place fossils visible in the Hubbard Rhino Barn. The site records a volcanic ash event about 12 million years ago, so it is much older than La Brea and centers on Miocene rhinos, horses, and camels.^[Ref-16]

Nearby Museums on Museum Row

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, immediately west of Hancock Park. LACMA covers art across periods and regions and sits beside the Project 23 discovery area.^[Ref-17]
• Craft Contemporary: Located at 5814 Wilshire Boulevard, across Wilshire from the Tar Pits. Its exhibitions focus on contemporary craft media, processes, artists, and designers.^[Ref-18]
• Petersen Automotive Museum: Located at 6060 Wilshire Boulevard near Fairfax Avenue. Its galleries trace automotive design, engineering, culture, and more than a century of vehicle history.^[Ref-19]
• Academy Museum of Motion Pictures: Located at 6067 Wilshire Boulevard, opposite the Petersen. The collection and exhibitions examine filmmaking, film history, and the work of movie production.^[Ref-20]

Questions About La Brea Tar Pits

La Brea’s most lasting exhibit is the relationship among place, specimen, and method. Asphalt seeps formed the record; excavation recovers it; laboratory work makes it readable. Even while the Page Museum changes around that process, the ground beneath Hancock Park keeps the scientific story active.