The annual dig got under way at...

The annual dig got under way at the LaBrea tar pits, where the diggers lost no time finding a 35,000-year-old condor’s wishbone (and resisted temptation.)

For that, you have to take the word of Page Museum vertebrate paleontologist Christopher Shaw, who is overseeing the two-month project for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

“We found the furculum of an extinct condor,” he reported. “Some condor experts think it’s the same species as the California condor, while others think it’s a direct ancestor.” There is, he said, “a big argument in the bird world over that.”

Although the dig was officially opened to public view on Friday (and will continue until Sept. 18), there has been a little work going on for a couple of days, during which the preserved remains of dire wolves, a saber-tooth cat and parts of an extinct horse were uncovered.

The digging is limited to two months every summer by funding constraints and by the fact that the asphalt (not tar) can be worked more easily in warm weather.

It’s also the time of year in which those dire wolves, saber-tooth tigers and horses fell in.

The makeup skills that Barry Berger picked up in Hollywood were put to good use in Miami, where he has been prettying up actors for TV commercials and whipping up some evil-looking dopers for the “Miami Vice” series. But they also got him into more than he bargained for.

Recently, he was called upon by the Miami cops to make an 18-year-old man appear dead. The police said they had learned that a jailed drug suspect had offered $5,000 to a certain Jose Jimenez (not the one you remember) to kill the young man for allegedly stealing some cocaine.

With the cooperation of both the supposed hit man and intended victim, detectives decided to “prove” to the suspect that the job was done. Berger gave the 18-year-old a corpse-like pallor, then laid on a few sickening streaks of color as well as a stubble. He used liquid plastic to create two bullet holes and capped it all with something called “Reel Blood,” spattering it over head, neck and clothes. A photograph of the “body” was sent to the suspect through a girlfriend. The fee was paid. Both the suspect and the girlfriend were busted on suspicion of conspiracy and attempted murder.

Berger’s wife, Gayle, said Friday that her husband “was a little worried” about taking part in the scheme and “as a matter of fact still is.” She said he “had to have about 12 assurances from the D.A. that nobody was going to come after him.”

The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners tabled a proposal Friday that would have used nearly $1.5 million in state and city money largely to teach the benefits of wearing automobile safety belts to two groups--elementary school children and police officers.

Commissioners did not object to a part of the proposed “Restraint Education and Directed Enforcement” program under which police officers would visit grade schools and distribute 50,000 $4 “Officer Snap” safety kits. But they questioned using public money to give buckle-up lessons to the very people who are supposed to enforce the state’s 1986 seat belt law.

Speaking on behalf of the plan, Lt. Richard Dyer of the Los Angeles police traffic coordination section noted that “a higher percentage of officers are hurt in traffic accidents than are gunned down in a blaze of glory.”

But some board members were not particularly sympathetic to figures showing that the public obeys the law better than the law enforcers. It seems that a city study found that while 40% of the general motoring public say they regularly buckle up, only 30% of the LAPD force admitted to doing so.

“If we told everybody that we think seat belts are so important that we passed legislation mandating seat belts and we still have people stupid enough not to wear them, and officers stupid enough not to wear them, than I don’t see why taxpayers have to pay for a program to save their lives,” said Commission Vice President Barbara Schlei.

The winner of the search for the nation’s champion long-distance commuter is not Kraig Kitchin of Santa Barbara, who was leading the pack the last time we looked. Instead, it is Rod Conklin, 35, a former Los Angeles resident and advertising salesman from Darien, Conn.

Since last December, Conklin has been driving the 408-mile round trip between home and his Boston office five days a week. He said at a press conference here Friday morning that he spends more than six hours a day on Interstate 95, listening to educational tapes and thinking.

He did not drive here however but was flown in by Kraco Enterprises, sponsor of the contest.