Excavators work at the bottom of the reactivated Pit 91 at the Page Museum La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles on Thursday, June 19, 2014.LOS ANGELES – The public can once again get a close look at scientists working to uncover the bones of saber-toothed cats, mastodons and mammoths in the heart of Los Angeles.
Officials at La Brea Tar Pits are reopening a shuttered exhibition hall and reactivating an excavation site, allowing visitors to look on as workers dig for prehistoric fossils from a pool of naturally occurring asphalt called Pit 91.
The expanded offerings at the George C. Page Museum, which oversees fossil collections at the tar pits, are meant to make more accessible the science of paleontology and what it can tell us about current issues such as global warming.
“These fossils are a wonderful resource for telling us about the climate change in the past,” the museum’s chief curator John Harris said.
In late June, the museum will resume free tours of the observation pit, a round mid-century building behind the nearby Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The sunlit hall brings visitors down spiral steps to see the bones of horses and camels trapped in natural asphalt.