Kids, Fossils Can Party at These Digs

Someone still reveling in single-digit birthdays might have trouble relating to the age of things at the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. There’s a 14,000-year-old juniper tree that’s the centerpiece of a new diorama, for instance, and fossils up to 40,000 years old.

And the museum itself is turning 25.

To mark the anniversary, and the start of the annual summer fossil dig, the museum is throwing a daylong celebration at the tar pits. Costumed characters from a modern “Ice Age”--the movie--will mingle with the kids and Nigel Marven of “Nigel’s Wild Wild World” on the Discovery Channel brings his animal show--with distant relatives of Ice Age creatures--to the outdoor stage.

Over at Pit 91, scientists will be at work digging out more fossils, as their annual two-month dig--which the public can watch--gets underway.

“It is the only active paleontological dig in the middle of a city anywhere in the world,” says Jim Gilson, administrator of the Page Museum. “It’s sort of like going to a dinosaur national park, but all you have to do is drive down the street and park.”

On Sunday, educators will give tours of the pit, where a half-dozen excavators should be immersed in primordial goo--actually bubbling asphalt--”digging deeper into the past than ever before,” says John Harris, the museum’s chief curator for paleontology. Pit 91 is the only one among 100 tar pits in Hancock Park that continues to be excavated. The oldest fossils from the pit, first excavated in 1908, are 40,000 years old.

Tours will explain how the painstaking excavation work at Pit 91--a syrupy pond roughly 28 feet square--is accomplished. Harris says they are excited about beginning to dig at the 14-foot level, even though it will take several years to completely dig across the pit at that depth. (Excavators only dig 6 to 12 inches deeper each year.)

“The hope is there that we will find something new,” he says, since work will be in the southwest corner, where fossils are concentrated. “After a while, you get a bit blase about your finds. If you find the leg of a ground sloth or even the jaw or limb of a saber-toothed cat, it’s not quite as exciting. It’s the rare things, like the talons of an eagle or the fruit of a juniper tree, that are most exciting.”

Tour guides will describe how a fossil is cleaned and categorized and, if they are lucky, point out workers plucking bones out of the ground. A tally board will track how many fossils are excavated during the day.

More than 3.5 million fossils are in the Page Museum’s collection, and they represent more than 650 different species of animals and plants. In an average year, about 1,000 fossils are discovered. Currently, the bones of two short-faced bears, which are a bit bigger than grizzly bears, are being pulled out of Pit 91.

“Together, the finds give you a tremendously detailed picture of what life was like here at the end of the last Ice Age,” Harris says. “For its time period, this is probably the richest site in the world.”

New documentation of that richness will be unveiled at 10:30 a.m. Sunday when a new juniper tree diorama, which interprets what the local climate was 20,000 years ago, is unveiled. In the scene, skeletal remains abound: A golden eagle--the most common fossil found in the tar pits--is perched on the tree; a coyote looks up at the eagle, a jackrabbit in its talons.

Throughout the day, free activities will be held outdoors and food will be available. Festival-goers can have their faces painted to resemble Ice Age predators, reconstruct a life-size skeleton of a saber-toothed cat or listen to Albert Cooper, a historian who plays a 1920s “bone digger,” who will recount his fossil-hunting days.

Animals with meat still on their bones will also be part of the day. Marven’s two 20-minute afternoon shows will feature live, local animals. The exact species of his co-stars remains to be determined, Gilson says. It depends on whom Marven bonds with best.

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Twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, Page Museum, 5801 Wilshire Blvd., Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Outdoor activities free; Sunday museum admission $6 for adults, 25 cents for age 5 to 12 with each paid adult admission. Under age 5, free. Pit 91 Excavation, Wednesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Ends Sept. 8. Free. (323) 934-PAGE, www.pagemuseum.org.