BURBANK : Children Get Close Look at Tar Pit Exhibit

For 10-year-olds at a museum, there is a single, all-encompassing commandment: Don’t touch.

So when tour guide Mary Ann Dunn pointed around a corner at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History in Burbank and spoke the words “touch specimen,” the 20 youngsters bolted before she could finish her sentence.

The 8- to 12-year-olds from a Burbank Parks and Recreation summer camp were at the museum--which reopened last week after five months of earthquake repairs--to take in some local paleontology. The exhibit, called “Treasures of the Tar Pit,” has been touring the country for five years and is now back near its home of Rancho La Brea, where millions of ancient animal skeletons were discovered buried in tar in 1875.

“It’s really the highlights of the tar pits,” said Dunn.

The exhibit comes complete with tar, or asphalt, as is the proper term, according to Dunn.

Pulling at a post that was sunk in thick black goo, one boy said what seemed to be on the minds of all Friday: “I wouldn’t want to be trapped in tar.”

The exhibit covers the Rancho La Brea area during the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago, when viscous crude oil bubbled up through cracks in the bedrock, settling in shallow pools, and leaving asphalt when the oil evaporated.

As Dunn explained to the campers and counselors, leaves and grass fell and camouflaged the pits. Unwary critters would then wander in and get stuck.

Other animals would see those trapped and step in thinking they’d found a quick lunch.

The result was millions of creatures, from thumb-sized lizards to huge American lions, being preserved in the goo. In a single two-foot cube of the asphalt on display, dozens of bones lie piled on top of each other.

Also found was a single human skull--the mere mention of which elicited a chorus of “Oooohs”--believed to be that of a woman who died 9,000 years ago of a head wound.

While visitors to the permanent tar pit display at the George C. Page Museum in Los Angeles may have seen many of these exhibits before, this show does contain several new ones, said Dunn, including a mural by artist Mark Hallet showing more than 100 different animals and plants from the period.

Many of the youngsters Friday morning were awed by the 20,000-year-old skeletons of creatures now extinct.

“I love museums and science and stuff,” said Andrea Dumas, 10. “They’re so cool.”

Others were less interested in the past. Rubbing furiously the only touchable bone--a femur of a Harlan’s ground sloth--Ruben Vigil looked up at his friends with wide eyes.

“Imagine if this was bigger and you were on a skateboard!” he exclaimed.

The show will be on display 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday until Sept. 5 at the museum, 555 N. 3rd St. in Burbank. Prices are $3.50 for adults, $2.50 for seniors and students, and $1.50 for children 5 to 12. Those under 5 get in free.