Stuffed Stuff

The Ruin of Many a Poor Dire Wolf

Just to be different, today’s offering is some bones of animals that died naturally thousands of years ago, rather than skins of animals that were killed within the last century. These are from the La Brea Tar Pits in LA, which I visited a couple of years ago.

Yes, for those of you not in the know, Los Angeles has, right at its centre, pits of bubbling tar that should really only appear in dinosaur films. Actually, these pits are a lot more recent - tens of thousands rather than millions of years old. And they have been the ruin of many a poor mastodon, or, in this case, dire wolf. In fact, nearly 4,000 dire wolf skeletons have been pulled from the tar, which, for some reason, I find a bit disturbing. The tar pits are particularly rich in carnivore skeletons, supposedly because when a prey animal got stuck in them, lots of predators would be attracted, and then they would get stuck too.

The museum, including heaps of giant skeletons and a fishbowl lab where you can (sometimes) watch scientists cleaning tar off bones (and other sciencey stuff), is well worth a visit. This is particularly if you have in tow a four-year-old with an incredible knowledge of prehistoric creatures, or are an adult with the mind of a four-year-old.