Beneath the famed La Brea Tar Pits, a raging volcano pushes to the surface, raining a storm of deadly fire bombs and an endless tide of white-hot lava upon the stunned city. Experience the pulse-pounding thrills as the dream capital of the world erupts into the stuff nightmares are made of.
What are the La Brea tar pits?
The La Brea Tar Pits ranks as an extraordinary and unique geological feature. Incredible as it may sound, they lie within a major metropolitan area in the United States. The ancient Native American tribes indigenous to the area knew these well. The Chumash and Tongva tribes used the naturally occurring tar to seal their canoes.
Why are there so many tar pits in Los Angeles?
Not only is L.A. a city where the Pleistocene Epoch collides with the present day along a major thoroughfare, but the tar pits also prove L.A. was a hotbed of ancient innovation. The earliest residents used the pitch to seal their roofs, waterproof their boats and fuel their campfires.
Was La Brea Woman Buried with a tar trap?
"Tar Trap: No Evidence of Domestic Dog Burial with "La Brea Woman" ". PaleoAmerica. 2: 56–59. doi: 10.1179/2055557115Y.0000000011. S2CID 130862425.
How old are the La Brea trench pits?
Radiometric dating of preserved wood and bones has given an age of 38,000 years for the oldest known material from the La Brea seeps. The pits still ensnare organisms today, so most of the pits are fenced to protect humans and animals.
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Does LA have a volcano?
There are no volcanoes in Los Angeles. The closest volcanic activity is the Lavic volcanic field and Coso volcanic field.
Why do the La Brea Tar Pits bubble?
In 2007, researchers from UC Riverside discovered that the bubbles were caused by hardy forms of bacteria embedded in the natural asphalt. After consuming petroleum, the bacteria release methane. Around 200 to 300 species of bacteria were newly discovered here.
How were the La Brea Tar Pits formed?
The fossil fuels have been seeping through fissures in the sediment for the last 40,000 years and in low-lying areas, those deposits pool, creating– you guessed it– tar pits.Jun 28, 2016
Is there lava under LA?
The closest volcanic area to Los Angeles is the Coso Volcanic Field that lies just north of Ridgecrest, California, about 181 miles north of Los Angeles.
Can you escape a tar pit?
They can't be escaped and they will bury you if you allow it. Recently I was sucked into the tar pits because of my own success.Mar 27, 2001
What is tar made of?
The heavy, oily, dark-colored liquid called tar comes from wood, coal, bones, and other organic substances. It is made by the process called destructive distillation—subjecting the materials to intense heat in the absence of air.
Will there be a 2nd season of La Brea?
There is some very good news, as well as a bit of patience-testing news, for fans of NBC's freshman hit La Brea. La Brea Season 2: Everything We Know! Sources tell TVLine that Season 2 of the timey-wimey family drama will in fact span 14 total episodes, or 40 percent more than Season 1's run of 10.Feb 22, 2022
Are tar pits flammable?
Useful both for waterproofing and for its flammability, this sticky substance has been exploited by humans in the region for literally thousands of years—and it has also given L.A. some of its most impressive paleontological finds.Dec 6, 2014
How many tar pits are there?
How many pits are there? Over 100 fossil quarries, commonly called "pits," have been excavated since the turn of the 20th century. The term "pit" was applied to excavations made by the Los Angeles County Museum between July 1913 and September 1915.
Is Mount Diablo a volcano?
Mount Diablo itself is not a volcano, but was formed in the past couple million years by the folding and faulting of the earth's crust.
Is Mammoth Mountain a volcano?
Mammoth Mountain is a 3,369-m (11,053-ft) high volcano lies west of the structural rim of the caldera and is considered to represent a magmatic system distinct from Long Valley Caldera and the Mono-Inyo Craters.
Is there a volcano in Texas?
Pilot Knob is the eroded core of an extinct volcano located 8 miles (13 km) south of central Austin, Texas, near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and McKinney Falls State Park.
Overview
La Brea Tar Pits and Museum is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, pitch, or tar; brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the tar preserved the bones of trapped animals. The George C. Page Museum i…
Formation
Tar pits are composed of heavy oil fractions called gilsonite, which seeps from the Earth as oil. Crude oil seeps up along the 6th Street Fault from the Salt Lake Oil Field, which underlies much of the Fairfax District north of Hancock Park. The oil reaches the surface and forms pools, becoming asphalt as the lighter fractions of the petroleum biodegrade or evaporate. The asphalt then normally hardens into stubby mounds. The pools and mounds can be seen in several areas of th…
History
The Native American Chumash and Tongva people living in the area built boats unlike any others in North America prior to contact by settlers. Pulling fallen Northern California redwood trunks and pieces of driftwood from the Santa Barbara Channel, their ancestors learned to seal the cracks between the boards of the large wooden plank canoes by using the natural resource of tar. This inn…
Scientific resource
Contemporary excavations of the bones started in 1913–1915. In the 1940s and 1950s, public excitement was generated by the preparation of previously recovered large mammal bones. A subsequent study demonstrated the fossil vertebrate material was well preserved, with little evidence of bacterial degradation of bone protein. They are believed to be some 10–20,000 years ol…
Flora and fauna
Among the prehistoric species associated with the La Brea Tar Pits are Pleistocene mammoths, dire wolves, short-faced bears, American lions, ground sloths, and, the state fossil of California, the saber-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis).
The park is known for producing myriad mammal fossils dating from the last glacial period. While mammal fossils generate significant interest, other fossil…
Human presence
Only one human has been found, a partial skeleton of the La Brea Woman dated to around 10,000 calendar years (about 9,000 radiocarbon years) BP, who was 17 to 25 years old at death and found associated with remains of a domestic dog, so was interpreted to have been ceremonially interred. In 2016, however, the dog was determined to be much younger in date.
John C. Merriam of the University of California led much of the original work in this area early in th…
See also
• Binagadi asphalt lake
• Carpinteria Tar Pits
• Lagerstätten
• Lake Bermudez
• List of fossil sites
External links
• Page Museum – La Brea Tar Pits
• UCMP Berkeley website: describes the geology and paleontology of the asphalt seeps.
• Gocalifornia.com: La Brea Tar Pits – visitor guide.
• Palaeo.uk: "Setting the La Brea site in context."