Kids at the Pace Museum view a jawbone from "Zed," a nearly intact skeleton of a Columbian mammoth, on February 18. 2009. (Photo: Zuma/NewsCom)
Mammoth Discovery
Researchers unearth treasure trove of fossils in Los Angeles
Fossil finds this big don't happen every day.
Late in 2008, crews in Los Angeles dug into the ground near the La Brea Tar Pits to build an underground parking garage. In their excavation they stumbled upon the largest deposit of fossils from the last ice age ever discovered.
Researchers from the George C. Pace Museum at the tar pits were called in to examine the find. And last week they announced that among the fossils was a nearly intact skeleton of a Columbian mammoth.
This is an important discovery because only bits and pieces of mammoth skeletons have been found at the tar pits in the past. Researchers say the mammoth—which they have named Zed—is 80 percent complete. It's missing only a rear leg, a piece of its spine, and the top of its skull.
Another part of Zed that was found intact was its tusks. Mammoth tusks are made of a substance called dentine, which is more fragile than bone. So finding complete tusks is rare.
Zed's tusks measure 10 feet long, according to researchers. They estimate the beast stood 10 feet tall at the hip and died at the age of 47 to 49 years old. The average lifespan of a mammoth was 60 years.
Adding to the excitement of the mammoth discovery are the other fossils that were unearthed.
Along with the mammoth were a complete sabertooth cat skeleton, six dire-wolf skulls, bones from a large American lion, tree trunks, turtles, snails, clams, millipedes, fish, gophers, and leaves.
"This gives us the opportunity to get a detailed picture of what life was like 10,000 to 40,000 years ago," John Harris, chief curator at the museum, told the Los Angeles Times.
The area around the La Brea Tar Pits is a treasure trove of fossils. There used to be massive underground oil fields there, and petroleum would bubble up to the surface. This formed bogs that trapped and killed animals, then preserved their bones.
For more than 100 years, paleontologists have unearthed fossils from in and around the tar pits. But to make these new discoveries, scientists at the museum pioneered a new way of excavating fossils.
Normally, teams of researchers spend years delicately sifting through dirt and rocks at a fossil site. This process allows them to make discoveries without accidentally destroying something.
But the crew from the Pace Museum didn't have a lot of time. The parking garage needed to be completed. So they mapped out where the fossil deposits were and dug trenches in the soil around and underneath them. Then they wrapped them—soil and all—in plastic, built crates around them, and took the crates back to the museum.
This new process allows researchers to do a proper excavation without spending years in the field.
It took the museum team three-and-a-half months to remove 23 crates worth of fossil-rich soil from the garage area. So far, they have opened only three crates. But those three crates have given scientists a lot to study.
Researchers think it will take at least five years to explore all 23 crates.
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Excavation The act or process of digging in search of things from long ago Dentine The bony material underneath the enamel of a tooth that forms the main part of the tooth Paleontologist The science who studies animal and plant fossils for information about life in the past |
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