La Brea Tar Pits
Introduction
The La Brea tar pits have been well-known for over a century. Before the rise of European settlers, local Indian tribes used the tar to caulk canoes and waterproof tents. As the Industrial Revolution took off the early 1900s, the tar pits attracted oil men, as asphaltum is often associated with petroleum. Then,

[w]hen W. W. Orcutt, the original organizer of the geological department of Union Oil of California, reexamined the area in 1901, he discovered "a vast mosaic of white bones" on the surface of a pool of asphalt--the skeleton of a giant ground sloth, a huge armored animal that had been extinct for millions of years. As paleontologists subsequently probed the La Brea tar pits, it became obvious that the heavy asphalt had trapped numerous prehistoric animals and, more important, had then perfectly preserved their skeletons. It was perhaps the richest paleontological find ever made. (Franks and Lambert 1985, p. 3)

In the early 1920s, Los......

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Title: La Brea Tar Pits
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