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."

Comments

Re:Flintstone

[spineboy]

They've found COMPLETE frozen wooly mammoths in the Artic tundra in Russia, complete with hair and all
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_mammoth.html
So while this find is quite nice, it's by no means the best ever.

As seen on Dirty Jobs!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Multiple redundancy

[techno-vampire]

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."

Re:Who's Zed?

[d3m0nCr4t]

I take it you've never seen Pulp Fiction?

The pope?

[Moraelin]

Especially if it involves the Pope, Texas, and a midget or two.

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.

Re:The pope?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also let's remember that the Vatican, including the current pope, btw, has officially proclaimed Darwinism as correct.

Actually they haven't been so stupid as that. They've said something to the effect that it's the most likely explanation according to current understanding. They've quite rightly avoided creating a new religious dogma out of it.

Not fossils - bones!

[benwiggy]

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....

Hrm, this reads like a "new" find

[BLKMGK]

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?

Re:Hrm, this reads like a "new" find

[benwiggy]

They moved the earth out of the building site two years ago. It's taken them two years to go through enough of it to make a worthwhile announcement.
There's still loads of it left that they haven't got round to yet.

Tsk. Kids today, they want their archaeologic research done at broadband speeds.

Re:Hrm, this reads like a "new" find

[benwiggy]

Well, IANAA, but they knew there would be "stuff", given the location. Certainly, some prior analysis was done. But when I saw the crates in December, they were still excited about what they might find. They didn't say "we're looking forward to digging out the dire-wolves in crate 12".
Various bones are often tightly packed together with bones from other creatures and other matter, so until you actually remove the matrix and separate the bones, you don't know what you've got. But obviously, when part of a mammoth skull starts to be revealed, then you'll spot it immediately.
If a scientific paper was published, would you say "Old news. They've been working on it for years!"?

Re:Hrm, this reads like a "new" find

[ChrisA90278]

as to how they found the edges of the deposits - ground penetrating radar maybe?

Much of the area around there is just plain out dirt. The tar is in large pockets. They likely dug out the dirt. The tarpits are now surouned by a nice grass covered park. The tar is only in places where crude oil bubbles up through small cracks

The entire area at one time was an oil feild. It was such an obvious place to drill because the oil was visible at the surface. So it was drilled and pumped out in the eraly 20th century, mostly. There are a few operating wells around still.

Re:Hrm, this reads like a "new" find

[javajedi]

Lots more info here: http://excavatrix.blogspot.com/

Re:Flintstone

[geobeck]

If it was the composition of the soil in which the body was buried that preserved it for so long, then perhaps similar finds could be made in other non-tundra climes.

Uh-oh, maybe they'll have to declare all of northern Alberta a protected archaeological site...

Re:DUH

[ConanG]

There is no Rio Grande River. It's the Rio Grande. Rio means river in Spanish so it would be redundant to tack river at the end of the name. Also, it's the Sierra Nevada. Shouldn't add mountains at the end as sierra means mountain range. Redundant, once again.

Sarcasm misplaced

[ConanG]

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.