The La Brea Tar Pits offer visitors a unique experience and one of the most important collections of Ice Age fossils in the world. The lake, oozing with tar and bubbling with methane gas, is the site of a major ongoing excavation of Ice Age animals that died in the sticky asphalt deposits 28,000 years ago. Visitors will see skeletons of dire wolves, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, giant sloths, and many other birds and creatures, as well as life-size replicas of extinct mammals and a recreated scene of a mammoth trapped in the tarry deposits.
Inside, the George Page Museum features a fish-bowl laboratory where visitors can watch as paleontologists clean, examine, and restore bones and fossils. The famous Pit 91, where the annual excavation of fossils takes place, allows another fascinating opportunity for visitors to see the recovery process. Numerous exhibits take visitors on a journey through the prehistoric history of Los Angeles.
