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Zed's Dead ... But Astoundingly Well-Preserved!
Call me childish if you want, but I still take a five-year-old's delight in big urban construction projects. I like the noise and the girders and the people climbing around perilously in hard hats and the enormous machines digging and smashing and hauling steel hundreds of feet into the air. So when my car is paused at intersections, I often find myself craning my head around to try to get a better peek through the dust and glare at the newest metropolitan superstructures-in-progress. Probably this makes me a hazard to other drivers, but there it is.
So if you're anything like me, and you live in Los Angeles, you have probably noticed the construction happening in the last few years around the northeast corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, where the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the middle of a multimillion dollar renovation (though the current state of the economy has undoubtedly slowed the pace of that endeavor).
One museum campus spot around which there's been a particular amount of activity is the building known as LACMA West, which you'll recognize, even if you've never been in it, by the shining golden cylinder at the corner of its facade. The museum purchased this building in 1991, but it was formerly a May Co. department store, as you can see in this awesome vintage photograph.
LACMA also sits adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits, a fact which helps explain the extraordinary discovery that followed LACMA's demolition of the old two-story May Co. parking garage. Buried ten feet below the surface was a trove of fossils from the last Ice Age, the largest cache ever discovered.
You can listen to the story, including an interview with the leader of the excavation, here: Finds At L.A. Tar Pits Provide Glimpse Into Past
And you can see photos here: Major cache of fossils unearthed in L.A.
The fossils unearthed include the remains of a sabre-toothed cat, an American cave lion, a short-faced bear, many sloths, birds-of-prey, wolves, bison, horses, and the star attraction, a nearly complete mammoth skeleton nicknamed "Zed." Just as importantly, they uncovered tree trunks, branches, leaves, and root systems, pond turtles, gophers, snails, clams, fish, bugs, and algae; these are the sorts of small but phenomenally illuminating finds that were dismissively tossed out by the first excavators of the tar pits in the early twentieth century. And of course, while technically "fossils," the flesh, plant, and bone found in sand and tar have not been mineralized like dinosaur skeletons. They are actual preserved organic remains, in this case, an entire ecosystem's worth.
The area around the La Brea Tar Pits is protected land, so the LACMA crew was required to have a salvage archeologist on hand when they began construction. When the first fossils were discovered just over two years ago, a larger team of paleontologists was brought in to excavate the area. They had to work hastily, because LACMA already had plans to construct a new underground parking lot. The paleontological team managed to excavate the entire site --in huge, intact chunks-- in just three-and-a-half months, spiriting it away to the the Tar Pits' George C. Page museum for detailed exploration and study. They formally announced their discovery two weeks ago.
LACMA's new underground parking garage opened in early 2008.
When you start digging for construction in a major city, it's par for the course that you'll uncover evidence of the prior incarnations of that city from previous decades or even centuries. But it's much more unusual to discover a perfect record of the area from tens of thousands of years ago. I think it's pretty rad.
-Frank
So if you're anything like me, and you live in Los Angeles, you have probably noticed the construction happening in the last few years around the northeast corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, where the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the middle of a multimillion dollar renovation (though the current state of the economy has undoubtedly slowed the pace of that endeavor).
One museum campus spot around which there's been a particular amount of activity is the building known as LACMA West, which you'll recognize, even if you've never been in it, by the shining golden cylinder at the corner of its facade. The museum purchased this building in 1991, but it was formerly a May Co. department store, as you can see in this awesome vintage photograph.
LACMA also sits adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits, a fact which helps explain the extraordinary discovery that followed LACMA's demolition of the old two-story May Co. parking garage. Buried ten feet below the surface was a trove of fossils from the last Ice Age, the largest cache ever discovered.
You can listen to the story, including an interview with the leader of the excavation, here: Finds At L.A. Tar Pits Provide Glimpse Into Past
And you can see photos here: Major cache of fossils unearthed in L.A.
The fossils unearthed include the remains of a sabre-toothed cat, an American cave lion, a short-faced bear, many sloths, birds-of-prey, wolves, bison, horses, and the star attraction, a nearly complete mammoth skeleton nicknamed "Zed." Just as importantly, they uncovered tree trunks, branches, leaves, and root systems, pond turtles, gophers, snails, clams, fish, bugs, and algae; these are the sorts of small but phenomenally illuminating finds that were dismissively tossed out by the first excavators of the tar pits in the early twentieth century. And of course, while technically "fossils," the flesh, plant, and bone found in sand and tar have not been mineralized like dinosaur skeletons. They are actual preserved organic remains, in this case, an entire ecosystem's worth.
The area around the La Brea Tar Pits is protected land, so the LACMA crew was required to have a salvage archeologist on hand when they began construction. When the first fossils were discovered just over two years ago, a larger team of paleontologists was brought in to excavate the area. They had to work hastily, because LACMA already had plans to construct a new underground parking lot. The paleontological team managed to excavate the entire site --in huge, intact chunks-- in just three-and-a-half months, spiriting it away to the the Tar Pits' George C. Page museum for detailed exploration and study. They formally announced their discovery two weeks ago.
LACMA's new underground parking garage opened in early 2008.
When you start digging for construction in a major city, it's par for the course that you'll uncover evidence of the prior incarnations of that city from previous decades or even centuries. But it's much more unusual to discover a perfect record of the area from tens of thousands of years ago. I think it's pretty rad.
-Frank
scared