More on the Sticky Tar Pits

Having been involved in two major excavations of the La Brea Tar Pits, I can say that a single catastrophic interpretation of the pits simply cannot account for the stratification we see (“L.A. Woman,” by Amy Wilentz, Aug. 20). If all of the La Brea animals were killed in a massive flood, why is it that only some deposits of asphalt are filled with Columbian mammoths, for example, while others show no trace of them? When we date the pits using radiocarbon techniques, we see that some older species of plants and animals are only found in older pits, while other species are only found in younger ones.

Some pits also had rivers running through them--a cause of most of the snails and shells present--and in many of these deposits all of the bones are facing a single direction, dictated by the rivers’ flow. It makes one wonder how rivers could have left channels through the tar pits if the pits themselves were the result of a quick and violent flood.

David Gold

Irvine

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Wilentz’s article took me back to the early ‘60s, when I first visited the tar pits with my Cub Scout pack. I was wearing a new pair of high-tops. While weaving through some bushes, I leaped full-force into a hidden tar seep. Dang!

My right foot was immersed up to the ankle, and it took me a surprising amount of effort to pull it out. I walked back to the scout leader, my tar-covered shoe now festooned with twigs and leaves. He took one look at me and refused to allow that shoe inside his Falcon station wagon. There was nothing else to do but toss it in the trash while one of my snickering pack-mates found a plastic bag to wrap around my foot.

Frank Miezwa Jr.

North Tustin