Bone of Attention : New-Found Fossils Help Tar Pits Museum Celebrate an Anniversary

Rare bones from two extinct animals went on display at the La Brea Tar Pits on Friday, just in time to help celebrate the 10th anniversary of the George C. Page Museum.

The museum, rare in that it is built on top of the prized resource it was founded to explore, unveiled the latest finds--including the lower jaw from a rare American lion--during birthday celebrations at the facility, which is located on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5801 Wilshire Blvd.

The fossils are 38,000 to 40,000 years old, and they came from a new discovery at the site that is so huge it promises to greatly enrich the understanding of the animals that roamed that area so long ago, according to George T. Jefferson, a paleontologist with the Page Museum.

Ice Age Fossils

The La Brea Tar Pits, world-famous for the Ice Age fossils they have already yielded, trapped literally millions of animals over thousands of years, some of which became mired in the bituminous morass while feeding or passing through the area, while others paused to feed on those that had become trapped.

According to Jefferson, the latest fossils came from a site that was first discovered in 1972, when utility work crews accidentally cut into it, “but we hadn’t expected it to be this size.”

About a month ago county work crews began constructing sumps in the area to stop the naturally occuring asphalt from seeping onto Wilshire Boulevard, and the entire mass of tar--including the fossils it contains--was excavated and dumped in the museum’s park. Workers there have been picking through the deposit ever since, finding bits and pieces of numerous birds, including vultures, and many of the animals that were common to the area, such as bobcats.

But the most significant find was the lower jawbone of the American lion, which is very rare, Jefferson said. The American lion was about 25% larger than the African lion, weighing as much as 700 pounds, and although parts of as many as 70 other American lions have been found in the tar pits, the latest discovery is still important because the animal was so rare, Jefferson said.

“The larger sample that we have, the better chance we have of determining what the species was like as a whole, and the more we can determine about its habits, what it was like and what it did,” he said.

Museum officials are also excited about the discovery of two anklebones from the right side of two rare capromeryxes, or dwarf pronghorned antelopes.

“This is a very interesting animal,” Jefferson said. “It’s totally extinct now.”

Tiny Antelopes

Dwarf antelopes were “very, very small,” he said. “They stood only about two feet tall, and they were very rare here.”

The fact that so few bones from that animal have been found in the pits may indicate that it was nocturnal, he said.

“The tar cools off at night and becomes solid, so if the animal is active (at night) it won’t get stuck as often,” Jefferson said.

The site has not yielded any remains of the giant mastodons that have been found elsewhere in the pits.