Major cache of fossils (from the last ice age) unearthed in L.A.

[sabra]

Source: LA Times

A nearly intact mammoth, dubbed Zed, is among the remarkable discoveries near the La Brea tar pits. It's the largest known repository

Workers excavating an underground garage on the site of an old May Co. parking structure in Los Angeles' Hancock Park got more than just a couple hundred new parking spaces. They found the largest known cache of fossils from the last ice age, an assemblage that has flabbergasted paleontologists.

Researchers from the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea tar pits have barely begun extracting the fossils from the sandy, tarry matrix of soil, but they expect the find to double the size of the museum's collection from the period, already the largest in the world.

Among their finds, to be formally announced today, is the nearly intact skeleton of a Columbian mammoth -- named Zed by researchers -- a prize discovery because only bits and pieces of mammoths had previously been found in the tar pits.

But researchers are perhaps even more excited about finding smaller fossils of tree trunks, turtles, snails, clams, millipedes, fish, gophers and even mats of oak leaves. In the early 1900s, the first excavators at La Brea threw out similar items in their haste to find prized animal bones, and crucial information about the period was lost.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fossils18-2009feb18,0,7775847.story

[opihimoimoi]

1. How exciting...this is marvelous.....The Gov't should stop all efforts to build there

and make it a research project....

[aquart]

3. What idiot was even trying to build there?

[izquierdista]

4. That's PRIME Los Angeles real estate

Has been for over 100 years. Sure, they built around the lake of tar that was LaBrea, but it seems the lake gets bigger in area as you go down. Who knows what is 100 feet under that neighborhood!

[Raster]

27. A volcano is 100 feet under that neighborhood. Tommy Lee Jones said so.

[sellitman]

42. Phillis Diller?

:)

[valerief]

48. Hey, hey, hey! Phyllis is my idol! nt

[montanto]

7. lol.

The area has been built for nearly 100 years: no unimproved space. The May building has been there since the thirties probably. That entire area is well known to have a foundation of ice age fossils, so its nothing new. Kind of like all the stuff thats under the streets of Rome and other big ancient cities. Can't very well tear the whole town down to get at stuff that wasn't considered important 80 years ago.

[roguevalley]

21. this is awesome. I can't wait for the shows on what they find, probably

includes mucho stuff never found before.

[Johonny]

46. LACMA

The art museum is basically built on the tar pits. I believe the construction of the new parking structure for the expansion of the museum was the primary reason for the dig.

[tinrobot]

8. The government can't afford that land.

It's right in the middle of one of Los Angeles' more popular and expensive business corridors. That plot is worth a LOT of money.

[opihimoimoi]

52. History trumps Capitalism.....at least...it should....we will see....

[dmr]

2. Awesome! It's more than awesome!

I agree with opihimoimoi, above, hoping that the Feds step in to preserve the area for research and history's sake.

[Deep13]

5. Too bad my baseless, irrational beliefs require me to ignore...

...all that awesome new evidence. The world and universe presented by science is so amazing. Unfortunately, my god is a little god and I will burn forever if I don't keep him little.
:P

[Divine Discontent]

31. your god may be little, but my God is an awesome god that made that stuff & studying the science of

creation is not a damnable offense - oh wait, you're referring to the Robertson/Hagee/Parsely types, gotcha... HA

[Deep13]

34. Well, I was referring to extreme creationists who think the Earth is not as old...

...as the invention of beer. Still, I respectfully submit that "studying creation" puts the cart before the horse. Before we can study god's creation, we first have to demonstrate that god created anything. Frankly, any deity that can be described as "awesome" should not be so difficult to find.

[Divine Discontent]

35. I find the creation in everything.

oh, and I know who you mean now, those "6000 years" people, gotcha. yep.

[pipi_k]

43. The ones who make me want to strangle them...

Prove to them with carbon dating that some relic goes back to the time of Jesus (like the Shroud of Turin)...

Oh, isn't Science great???? Look at what an amazing thing it did!




Prove to them with carbon dating that something goes back a couple of hundred thousand years...


NO!!!!!!!!!! Does not compute!!!! Mind does not accept this! Science BAD!!!!!!!



"Morans" with a capital M

[Dr.Phool]

6. I heard that they dug McCains birthplace out of there!

[lazyriver]

9. Impressive but does it really beat the collection of fossils

making up the minority party in Congress? I guess so because the ice age fossils can be cleaned up and made useful in museums. The Congressional fossils are beyond hope.

[Deep13]

13. Yes those specimens have been degraded by corruption.

The remains have no structural integrity left.

[XemaSab]

10. Cool!

The Page museum is SUPER cool... a must visit if you're in LA.

[Lebam in LA]

44. I used to go over to the Page at lunchtime.

Before my company moved we were right across the street so I would sit in the park and have lunch. I really miss that daily opportunity. sounds like time to make another visit.

[happygoluckytoyou]

11. In a related story---> early cavedrawings of McCain discovered

[Yavin4]

12. Every Time I See A Story Like This, I Think of Bill Hicks

R.I.P. funny man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qmglGWMsdk

[Submariner]

18. Thanks for posting that

I miss that guy. I can only imagine the laughs we could have got from Bill during the Chimpster's regime.

[Politicalboi]

14. Maybe they will find

Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble too. Because we know that people and dinosaurs lived in peace and harmony 6 thousand years ago. :sarcasm: Yaba Daba Doo!

[MilesColtrane]

15. One, among the many scientific treasures uncovered, was Abe Vigoda's first grade report card.

[mcjackson]

16. Those weren't fossils....

....its was just Lindsay Lohan asleep on a park bench. BANG! ZOOM!!!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

17. Is THAT what it was? I thought those were shots of CA's sleeping senators.

wow. They looked so, well, almost human.

[Beetwasher]

19. They Also Found A Nearly Intact Sylvester Stallone

n/t

[underpants]

20. I understand that they got Joan Rivers ready for "The Apprentice"

[AlphaCentauri]

22. they could fine more fossils in some of LA fundamentalist churches n/t

[county worker]

23. Too bad only about 23% of Americans can accept that this is older than

the bible says animals existed.

[Divine Discontent]

32. time is as limitless as God. we don't know how old everything really is, but one thing's certain

this is a COOL find!

[Kurovski]

24. K&R. Very cool.

I hope they find Jesus' pet terasaur!

[Myrina]

25. "Scientists were alarmed to find a note attached to the mammoth...

... with stick drawings and early hieroglyphs that seem to warn against deforestation, urban sprawl, overuse of oil-based fuels, and another immenent period of glacial warming ..."


:spank:

[marew]

26. What!?! (here's a good laugh!)

But my fundie friend assured me that the earth is ONLY 2,000 years old! When I asked why, then, carbon dating shows things to be much, much older? To which, she replied with a straight face, "It was the great flood that covered everything and made things look older that they really are." :rofl:

[geardaddy]

33. What an uneducated fundie

eejit.

[pipi_k]

40. Oh lord, I don't know which one is worse...

I have a Fundy relative who told me (quite seriously) that the reason all those dinosaur fossils were there is because "God put them there to test our faith".


which basically, if I understand that correctly, means that God is a big practical joker who likes fucking with the minds of the mentally unstable.


Uh, yeah. Definitely someone I'd like to get to know better....

:eyes:

[Arugula Latte]

50. What's the deal with the omnipotent deity? The practical jokes, the disease, the famine, the war ...

There's only one conclusion: The invisible supreme being is a prick.

[onager]

56. The earth is only as old as Jesus?

I've seen that "2,000 years" claim before and it completely buffles me. (Buffle=baffles+buffalos).

I love Creation Math!

Surely even the dumbest Fundamentalist knows that the Jesus myths only date back 2,000 years.

So if they accept that date for the creation of the world, they just invalidated the entire Old Testament. Since it clearly references civilizations that rose and fell much earlier than 2,000 years ago. Guess that doesn't occur to them.

I'm writing this in Alexandria, Egypt, where I've lived for several years. This city was founded nearly 2400 years ago, and some of its oldest Greek cemeteries, dating back to that time, are a short walk from my apartment.

Of course, if I go 120 miles to the south, I can see some fairly large structures that have been standing for about 5,000 years...

[marksmithfield]

28. How neat is that!

Always loved the tar pits.

[geardaddy]

29. this just in: photos of the fossils.

[Beetwasher]

37. One More Facelift And She'll Have A "Button" On Her Chin

And her belly button is ALREADY on top of her head. You do the math.

[geardaddy]

45. lol

indeed!

[dcindian]

30. Hey did they find McCains back bone in there?

How about his mores?

[volstork]

36. God just put them there

to test our faith.

:sarcasm:

[pipi_k]

41. OMG I just posted that up above

A relative honestly said that to me, some years ago.

[iandhr]

38. This is cool

[JDPriestly]

39. That property is owned by the L.A. County Museum

COUNCILMAN Tom LaBonge told The Times earlier this week that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art might use its newly acquired piece of land, across Wilshire Boulevard from the LACMA campus, to accommodate a new subway station. Whether that winds up happening -- LACMA itself has been touting the space beneath the old May Co. building, which the museum bought in 1994, as a potential Metro location -- LaBonge's comments gave this significant story a curious, and limiting, spin.

http://www.gg-art.com/news/read.php?newsid=8966

[Raine]

47. Living in the LA area I've been there many

times ... this is so COOL! :bounce:

[BreweryYardRat]

49. Really fucking cool.

And a nearly-complete Columbian mammoth skeleton? Fucking SCORE!!! I believe that's the largest known mammoth species.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

55. Maybe someday they can clone a mammoth.

Reverse engineer the DNA. Sounds like it could be done.

Tres cool!!!! :D

[Arugula Latte]

51. What I wouldn't give to unearth a fossil like that ...

*sigh*

[Faryn Balyncd]

53. Maybe the R's can get them registered.

[burrowowl]

54. This is interesting

Thanks for post!

[pleah]

57. K&R Very cool.