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Major Cache of Fossils Unearthed In Los Angeles
aedmunde sends along news from the LA Times: "A nearly intact mammoth, dubbed Zed, is among the remarkable discoveries near the La Brea Tar Pits. It's the largest known deposit of Pleistocene ice age fossils... in what might seem to be the unlikeliest of places — under an old May Co. parking lot in L.A.'s tony Miracle Mile shopping district. ...huge chunks of soil from the site have been removed intact and now sit in large wooden crates on the back lot... The 23 crates range... from the size of a desk to that of a small delivery truck... There were, in fact, 16 separate deposits on the site, an amount that, by her estimate, would have taken 20 years to excavate conventionally. ... Carefully identifying the edges of each deposit, her team dug trenches around them and underneath, isolating the deposits on dirt pedestals. After wrapping heavy plastic around the deposits, workers built wooden crates similar to tree boxes and lifted them out individually with a heavy crane. The biggest one weighed 123,000 pounds."
Well, it is right next to the La Brea tar pits, so, DUH. The building site is easily seen as you enter the new Renzo Piano-designed wing to LACMA
They are called, "old people", and yes, there are a lot of them in L.A.
Wow, that's a mammoth of a find.
Zed's dead baby, zed's dead.
I'll be impressed if they find the fossilized remains of Fred Flintstone.
The fossils were found under a parking lot.
Obvious really - Thag and his wife Urga came back from the show to find their trusty mammoth leg-clamped for over-parking. They couldn't afford the unclamping fee, so had to walk home. The rest is history.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
We also would have accepted jokes about how a mammoth is too big to fit in cache and you would probably get better performance by using -Os rather than -O3.
> "in what might seem to be the unlikeliest of places..."
Hey, Marge! I found fossils in a known tar pit - who would have guessed.....!!
talk amongst yerselves
(Leela and Fry are in the Planet Express ship, trapped deep in the La Brea tar pits! Seeking any means of escape from Certain Doom, Leela scans the endless depths of their petroleum prison...)
[Leela looks at a scanner.]
LEELA
It's some kind of hollow tube, devoid
of human life. The Los Angeles subway!
We can blast our way in and escape!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
These guys were on Dirty Jobs, I think two weeks ago. (Maybe three.) They've been working on that single fossil for a LONG time. (With good reason - it's a freaking mammoth.)
from the size of a desk to that of a small delivery truck
For those of you who prefer more conventional measurement units, that's between 0.35 and 2.5 volkswagens.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Was Susan Saradon among those fossils unearthed?
How about her son, Tim Robbins?
Just in case anybody cares, "La Brea" is Spanish for "the Tar," so "The La Brea Tar Pits" translates into "The The Tar Tar Pits."
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Lies. All God fearing Americans know the Earth is only about 6000 years young
Je ne parle pas francais.
Beverly Hills!!!
What I don't understand is why this is news.
(Pico and Sepulveda...)
(Pico and Sepulveda...)
Doheney...
Cahuenga...
La Brea...
TAR PITS!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I don't know about "flamebait", but this would make a great "ask Slashdot". Another 1200 comment thread would certainly drive up the ad revenue.
And by quarrying the fossils in bulk sections, the geomorphic relationship is completely lost. Much, if not most of the scientifically valuable information that can be gained from a fossil site comes from the relationship of the fossils in situ to the stratigraphic setting, etc. While this may seem like news, it is just a report of the same business-as-usually destruction of valuable scientific information by paleontologists who should know better but who somehow do not know or do not care.
Needed that one (tough day/week/month whatever).
Thanks! ^_^
Have they found the MPAA's business model yet? ;)
ziiing!
Whats the harm in yelling 'Computer, end program!'? You could be living in Star Trek! Go on.. give it a try.
That'd still be a flamebaiting "Ask Slashdot" and would be full of more flamebait threads.
Maybe I'm the only sixth grader in the room, but anyone else think they might want to rethink the lettering in that little sign in the picture?
This story is tagged "metricplease", but they didn't have the metric system in the mesozoic era. Sheesh.
I was wondering why they called it Zed and then I remembered - The United States is only a couple of hundred years old, so it couldn't have been American and that's why they called it Zed rather than Zee.
Mammoths normally lived to about 60, so Zed died prematurely.
Well, you'd die prematurely too if you stepped into a pool of petrochemical quicksand.
I seriously don't see the link between the Pope and US puritan nuts. Or between the pope and the young-earth idiocy for that matter.
If you look as far as back as St Augustine Of Hippo, he wrote in no uncertain terms that only an idiot would take the Genesis literally. "It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are." That's pretty much a thorough flaming of that point of view. He got sanctified by the catholic church, btw.
Plus, whatever bigotry the catholics might have had against science, were gone in the counter-reformation. (They had to try to stop losing ground to the protestants _somehow_.) The Society Of Jesus for example, is pretty much a scientific order sponsored by the Vatican. Those guys operate research labs and universities. And yes, they teach evolution and the big bang.
Also let's remember that the Vatican, including the current pope, btw, has officially proclaimed Darwinism as correct. So you won't find _them_ arguing that dinosaur fossils were placed there to test your faith.
Now I'm not saying the catholics are without fault. But ffs, blame them for their real faults, not for bullshit strawmen. Lumping them together with the young-earthers just shows massive ignorance. Blaming it on the pope is like blaming the fall of Byzantium on the emperor of China. That freaking stupid.
It seems to me like some people aren't in it even for the science-vs-religion parts, but just because they're cretin trolls seeking to annoy someone, anyone for attention.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What's that in less historic money? ;-)
interesting - do you guys over the pond use tons for big numbers or do you stick to pounds all the way up? Curious about the expression "123,000 pounds" - isn't that something like 100 tons or so? (he says plucking a figure out the air and being lazy ;-) )
Here we'd say kg for small numbers, but once we'd got to a thousand we'd shift to (metric) tons, e.g. "over 123 tons" not "over 123,000 kg". Or is that domain specific? do some things get measured in pounds all the way up, but others you shift into talking about tons? What do you measure aircraft carriers etc in? millions of pounds?
Great news though on the main topic, it will keep some university researchers happily employed for a good while!
The 23 crates range... from the size of a desk to that of a small delivery truck...
...Is that... one person desk or two persons desk? ... ...?
When the Hell did it become trolling to make jokes at the expense of Susan Saradon?
Considering it was found under a County Museum parking lot, it should be named Steven Anthony.
I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
I don't see why this is so surprising a location - it is just down the street (Wilshire) from the La Brea tar pits.
I was shown around the crates late last year. They are not fossils - they are bones that have been preserved by the tar. They have not undergone transformation in sedimentary rock.
I also gave the tar a good poking with a stick. It's easy to see how large four-legged animals would get stuck in it.
The museum also has a huge collection of sabre-tooth tigers - who thought all the stuck prey would be an easy catch....
Simpson's did it
I don't suppose anyone knows where the nearest Thousander math is located?
but the article says they took over 3 months to unearth them TWO YEARS ago. Kind of took a little excitement out of it to get nearly through the whole article to find out this all took place years ago. Would have been nice to have more pictures of the process and maybe an explanation as to how they found the edges of the deposits - ground penetrating radar maybe?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
..because as we all learned from Bugs Bunny, "Therrr'es no La Brrrea Tarrr Pits in Scotland!". And since their find is not Scottish, it must be CRAP!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
A nearly intact mammoth, dubbed Zed,
Translation for British /.ers:
A nearly intact mammoth, dubbed Z,
For the last time people, creationism isn't science. Comparing creationism to science is beyond stupid. Creationism is a highly unlikely article of faith passed down through the generations, recently used as a wedge issue to get silly people to vote for Republicans. The scientific theories known informally as "global warming" represent actual science done by real scientists - and have recently been used as a wedge issue to get silly people to vote for Democrats.
And lest we forget who the real villains are, keep in mind that creationists want to shove their superstition down your kid's throat in school, while environmentalists just want your car to perform better.
Man...is the...summary...for this...story...awesome
What do you mean nearly intact? Them just bones. Not nearly as intact as The Encino Man
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Noah's Ark is a problem. We'll have to call it "Early Quantum State Phenomenon"... Only way to fit 5000 species of mammals on the same boat...
Whose bone is this?
-It's not a bone, baby, it's an os innominatum.
Whos os innominatum is this?
-It's Zed's.
Who's Zed?
-Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
Whoosh implies there was some sort of humor to get.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
CTRL + SHFT + DEL then check CACHE then hit ENTER
Never a dull moment back home in L.A.
SARAVA!
You killed Zeddy!!
You bastards!
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Future archaeologists are going to be confused when they find all these dinosaurs buried in Hollywood. I predict that museums by then will have huge wax models of Will Smith riding a triceratops.
Mod parent up, this is the most insightful post I've seen on slashdot in months. Thanks for the new Sig.
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
another one of gods tricks to try and make us believe the world is older then 6000 years so he can send us to hell~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This post has unanimously been awarded the English Language Institute's New Adjective Award, for "best use of 'tony' as an adjective."
Nov. 4, 2008 (in the evening).
Mammoth calls Rails a Ghetto...
*crickets*
Actually, La Brea is the name of the ranch the tar was found at and obviously named for. So 'La Brea Tar Pits' is short for 'Rancho La Brea Tar Pits'. It's not redundant in this case as it's referencing a proper noun.
I was up in LA about a month ago and went to the la brea tar pits. Inside the museum they have an area where you can see the paleontologists at work. We went over christmas, so we didn't get to see them, but they left a big block of soil with Zed's tusk on display. If you went now you could probably see them preparing and cleaning the rest of Zed
Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead.
a shame that wasn't also linked in the summary. Good pics and a sense of what is going on with the project. Seems they have a Flickr page and were filmed for Discovery's Dirty Jobs too - neat!
Thanks for the very interesting link!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org