Los Angeles appears to be in the...

Los Angeles appears to be in the throes of fossil fever.

At the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits Wednesday, an observation station was reopened to allow tourists to view the excavation of bones from Pit 91. Last summer, paleontologists and volunteers recovered 746 fossils from the soft asphalt grave, including the tibia of an ancient bison and rare foot bones of a tiny pronghorn antelope.

Meanwhile, downtown, an exhibition of dinosaur skeletons is slated to begin today in the lobby of an office building at 400 S. Hope St. On display are Los Angeles County Natural History Museum models of a duck-billed dinosaur, Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus, and of the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

The latter is no relation to Rex, Il Ristorante, the elegant eatery that can also be found in downtown Los Angeles.

On the heels of Unocal’s offer to buy and scrap 7,000 old smog-spewing Southland cars for $700 each, Ford Motors has jumped on the bandwagon. On Wednesday, officials of the auto giant announced they would purchase and crush a thousand more pre-1971 vehicles for the same price.

Since the offer is good for autos of any manufacturer, a Ford spokesman said it was unclear what percentage of the vehicles they demolish are likely to be old Falcons, Fairlanes, Mavericks, Torinos, Skyliners or Edsels. Also unclear, they said, is just how many pre-1971 Fords are still rattling around the roadways of Los Angeles.

Word comes from a passing motorist that the California state flag was flying upside down this week on a pole outside the Los Angeles County Public Health Center in Glendale. Embarrassed center officials maintained that it was a simple mistake--not a statement about the level of state funding for county health services.

Yet another alleged crime kingpin is behind bars and will not strike again in the foreseeable future, authorities announced this week. Long Beach police said that the bank robbery suspect, whom they had dubbed “The Bowling Ball Bandit,” has turned himself in. The heavy-set suspect earned his nickname not because he takes bowling balls, but because he is shaped like one.

Last December, community activist Glenn Swain erected a tent for the homeless on a vacant lot in South-Central Los Angeles. To help win support from the lot’s owner, the Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Swain told the pastor he would keep the tent up only until the end of the holidays. At the time, he meant New Year’s Day, not Independence Day.

But weeks turned to months and more than 100 homeless people continued to show up each night. Swain and his wife, Sandra, pressed ahead.

With expenses rising, a mutual decision was finally reached to dismantle the tent. Some of the residents still had no place to go, but workmen arrived at the site at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

“Overall, the tent was a blessing,” said Mt. Zion official Earlie Moore. “We did what we could and things had to come to an end.”

miscelLAny:

During the 1980s, L.A. County’s population increased by an average of 300 people per day.