La Brea Tar Pits and Museum
Museum · Mid-Wilshire
5801 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Highlights
Dive into the world's largest Ice Age fossil site, where a lively museum and captivating excavations reveal prehistoric wonders for all ages.
Dive into the world's largest Ice Age fossil site, where a lively museum and captivating excavations reveal prehistoric wonders for all ages.
"Over one million Ice Age fossils have been unearthed in the heart of Miracle Mile. The museum offers a variety of exhibits for a family-friendly admission price. In the fossil lab, watch paleontologists clean and catalogue findings. Outside, check out Pit 91, which is still being excavated. The free park area offers shady lunchtime seating, and the lake of bubbling asphalt, with life-sized models of a trapped Columbian mammoth and American mastodon, is food for thought." - Huge
"The La Brea Tar Pits are pits of, well, tar that has been bubbling up from beneath the earth for tens of thousands of years. They're viewable for free, and the compact La Brea Tar Pits Museum (which does charge admission) exhibits fossils and bones that were preserved when animals became trapped in said tar. It's a major landmark, and one of the most visited tourist spots in all of Los Angeles. The collection of bones is extraordinary. There are spectacular composite skeletons of many extinct species, including Columbian mammoths, ground sloths, dire wolves, North American camels, and, of course, the famous saber-toothed cat. Beyond the skeletons, there are over a million Ice Age fossils to peruse." - Maxwell Williams
"The La Brea Tar Pits & Museum offers a compelling outdoor portion focused on the Ice Age, featuring bubbling tar ponds that provide a glimpse into prehistoric times with sabertooth tigers and mammoths. It offers family-friendly programming around climate change, extinct wildlife, excavations, and more." - Travel + Leisure Editors
"A natural history museum and active paleontological site with preserved fossils." - Stacey Leasca Stacey Leasca Stacey Leasca is an award-winning journalist and co-founder of Be a Travel Writer, an online course for the next generation of travel journalists. Her photos, videos, and words have appeare
"The La Brea Tar Pits & Museum Not only does this museum give you a peek at local prehistoric flora and fauna long before Hollywood CGI could create them, its deliciously corny and retro exhibits are reason enough to visit. Beginning at the still-oozing and sulphur-stinky tar pits on the grounds outside the building—with fake mastodons caught in the muck and on the solid ground beside it—the mood is old-school museum, but the science is real. Fossil excavation is ongoing and one of the galleries inside has an illuminated wall display of the skulls of hundreds of dire wolves pulled from the tar. (The ever-hungry wolves would be unable to resist the delicious sight of helpless animals stuck in the tar, and would venture in for the kill, only to get trapped themselves). The museum has not abandoned some of its old-fashioned showmanship, including a couple of animatronic displays, one of of saber-toothed tiger mechanically attacking a giant sloth. In a city full of modern sophistication and invention, the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum are able to educate about the city's distant and not-so-distant past."
