Pit 91 2007  (June 20 - October 7)

You don't have to travel to distant lands to see fossil "diggers" in action.  Take an expedition to the Miracle Mile of Los Angeles, the only city in the world that has a fossil treasure trove beneath gallons of "oozing" pitch blackness. 

Beginning Wednesday, June 20, the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits opens its famous "Pit 91," where the annual excavation of Ice Age fossils takes place. Visitors watch from a special observation area as paleontologists and volunteers recover bones from beasts like saber-toothed cats and dire wolves that died in the sticky asphalt deposits 28,000 years ago. 

During this excavation season, the Pit 91 visitor Viewing Station in Hancock Park is open free to the public Wednesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Rancho La Brea is one of the world's richest fossil deposits and the sticky
asphalt (commonly referred to as "tar") has trapped and preserved more than
three million fossils, many found in pristine condition.

"Every specimen we find in Pit 91 helps us piece together a giant "puzzle"
from the past to help us understand what life was like in ancient L.A. Each
year brings us closer to filling in the big picture," said Christopher Shaw,
collections manager and Pit 91 project coordinator at the Page Museum. "Last
year we collected more than 1,000 specimens in a two-month period, including
three saber-toothed cat skulls, four dire wolf skulls, and bones from giant
sloths, horses, bison, coyotes, birds, rodents and even some insects and
plant fossils."

From the Pit to the Page Museum:

Visitors can follow the fossil recovery process from Pit 91 to the Page
Museum. In the glass-enclosed Paleontology Laboratory within sight of visitors, paleontologists and Museum volunteers clean, identify
and store the thousands of fossils bones recovered from Pit 91. In addition, the Museum offers fascinating exhibits that chronicle the animal life that roamed the Los Angeles Basin years ago, including giant Columbian mammoths, ancient bison and California's state
fossil, the saber-toothed cat. Of special interest is a tank that recreates how animals became stuck in the sticky La Brea asphalt -- imagine trying to lift a leg to escape from an oily grave. Visitors can even touch a massive leg bone of an extinct giant ground sloth.