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Major Cache of Fossils Unearthed In Los Angeles

Posted by kdawson on from the sticky-underfoot dept.

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."

15 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Not politically correct. by iYk6 · · Score: 5, Funny

    They are called, "old people", and yes, there are a lot of them in L.A.

    1. Re:Not politically correct. by Mr.+Conrad · · Score: 5, Funny

      They better have evidence to backup their claims, as they're going against conventional wisdom. Everyone knows that the largest deposit of fossils is in Naples, Florida.

  2. Who's Zed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Zed's dead baby, zed's dead.

  3. Not unlikely at all by heretic108 · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

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    -- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
  4. doh! by djupedal · · Score: 5, Funny

    > "in what might seem to be the unlikeliest of places..."

    Hey, Marge! I found fossils in a known tar pit - who would have guessed.....!!

  5. Re:Flintstone by spineboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    ..........FULL STOP.
  6. Confusing by clarkkent09 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Confusing by argStyopa · · Score: 5, Funny

      I am so sick of every thread turning into some goddamn crusade for the metric system.

      Look, people, this was in the US, so we're simply going to use the imperial system (.08 to 0.6 Chrysler Imperials).

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      -Styopa
  7. Multiple redundancy by techno-vampire · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."

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    1. Re:Multiple redundancy by clarkkent09 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Mmmm, tartar pits..... picks up a fried fish finger

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  8. For those asking for metric... by PhilHibbs · · Score: 5, Funny

    This story is tagged "metricplease", but they didn't have the metric system in the mesozoic era. Sheesh.

    1. Re:For those asking for metric... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Funny

      This story is tagged "metricplease", but they didn't have the metric system in the mesozoic era. Sheesh.

      They almost did!

      In SE Asia they found a fossilized homo erectus, and in its hand it was holding a stone rod which was divided by carved grooves into ten equal sections, which were each then subdivided by smaller grooves into ten sections. Embedded in the specimen's skull was another rod, which was divided into twelve sections, with sixteen subdivisions.

      Thus we have evidence of the oldest known metric vs imperial argument, and its resolution. While anthropologists do not know the identity of the assailant who doomed the entire pleistocene to imperial measurements, it is assumed they were an early form of Yankee.

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      The enemies of Democracy are
  9. Not fossils - bones! by benwiggy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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....

  10. Re:123,000 pounds in modern money? by Teun · · Score: 5, Interesting
    You got a point.

    But the explanation is rather mundane, lets take some hypothetical super tanker accident.

    The oil company will claim less than ten thousand tons of oil might have leaked away.
    The clean up company will report about fifty five thousand barrels of oil to collect and Green Peace will talk about a disaster involving over twelve million litres of crude oil polluting the environment.

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  11. Re:The pope? by Asic+Eng · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The "loony left" in this case includes noted left wingers like John McCain and Giuliani , chairmen of oil companies, just about every government of the first world, the vast majority of published climate scientists ...