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Celebrating a Century of Fossil Finds In the La Brea Tar Pits
An anonymous reader writes "A century ago on Monday, the predecessor to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County began a two-year project to uncover the Ice Age creatures that became trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits. 'Digs over the years have unearthed bones of mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and other unsuspecting Ice Age creatures that became trapped in ponds of sticky asphalt. But it's the smaller discoveries — plants, insects and rodents — in recent years that are shaping scientists' views of life in the region 11,000 to 50,000 years ago.'"
They have dug up millions of bones - to what purpose?
The bones is a byproduct. The important thing is the information we got from them. The reason we don't dispose of the bones is because they might still have stories to tell.
Depending on how nihilistic you want to be one can say that there is no point in getting information on when and how different traits evolved. If you want to go all retard-capitalistic on it you can say that it doesn't provide anything of economic value.
Those views can be applied to pretty much all science, be it astrophysics to philosophy. Those views are also incredibly short-sighted and something one would expect from a PHB that can't see beyond the next quarter.