Today was Los Angeles/Hollywood day. Our first stop was the La Brea Tar Pits—somewhere both of us had always wanted to visit. Some of the outside displays are a bit hokey, i.e. the fiberglass mother mastodon slowly sinking in the tar coated water as her mate and little one look on in horror. But the actual excavation sites and the fossils are awesome.
The first sight of the main tar pit is a bit disappointing, with the fiberglass animals and all. It sort of looks like a big oily pond. But on closer examination you can see the asphalt leaking to the surface and the sheen of oil, thick in some areas and thin in others. There is constant bubbling of methane up from the depths, which gives it a horror movie aspect. The smell is like that of a new highway—which isn’t too surprising since both are asphalt based.
Over 3 ½ million fossils have been removed from the sites’ pits, and there are several promising pits yet to be examined. The museum has excellent displays of individual bones and whole specimens reassembled in great poses. We especially liked the wooly mammoths (and they were indeed mammoth) and saber tooth cats. It seems we were among the misinformed, who thought they were named saber tooth tigers, but they are not tigers, they are cats. At any rate, they did have impressive teeth.
One interesting piece of trivia--if you ever see displays of fossils with a characteristic dark brown coloration, chances are they came from the La Brea pits. The bones are permanently colored from being preserved by the tar and asphalt. But both are excellent preservatives, which is why this is such a treasure.
They are currently doing a massive study of the micro fossils—tiny visible to microscopic plants and animals in the surrounding soil that were previously discarded. They can discover amazing information about climate change from these little bits of data, much more informative about gradual change than the larger fossils. Since no one knows why such large numbers of mammals became extinct in a relatively short (archeologically speaking) time period, these may provide important clues.
Site 91 is currently under active excavation for three months out of each year (only that long due to budgetary constraints) and is available for viewing, safely behind glass of course. The conditions under which they dig are unbelievable. The petrified bones are imbedded in asphalt and the water that seeps around them as they dig is filled with tar and obnoxious oily gunk. They had a display of the clothes that had been worn, and they look like someone poured oil and tar over them. It reminded me of Elspeth’s play clothes.
We also did a really quick tour of one building oat LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). I wish we had had two or three days to go through more of the collections.
We checked out some African art, mostly masks and wood carvings, that were amazing. But my favorite part was the Picasso collections. We saw examples of several of his different periods and some of his sculptures. I had never seen any of them before. I find Picasso’s two dimensional work to be intriguing, but in three dimensions it crosses the line for me into very disturbing. There was also a wonderful Matisse display of charcoal, graphite and paint on paper.Then for a complete change of pace, we drove to Hollywood Boulevard to see the walk of fame at Grauman Chinese Theater. We joined the hordes of tourists gawking at the handprints, footprints, and signatures of famous actors, musicians, etc.
Some of the concrete slabs have “extras” besides the usual prints. Roy Rogers and Gene Autry both have horseshoe prints labeled with their horses names (Trigger and Champ). George Burns has a cigar print, Joe E. Brown has lip prints. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were on the same one. Her footprints were in spike heels. Some of them had bare footprints instead of shoes. Shirley Temple was when she was a young child.
Neither of us realized that the stars imbedded in the sidewalk are on both sides of the street for blocks. It is an interesting walk passing by various tacky souvenir shops and other tourist traps, with a sidewalk cast of people in full costume. We saw Spiderman, Superman, Supergirl, Rambo, Barney, Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, and host of others
We were tempted to take one of the tours by the houses of the stars, but the price is outrageous, and we still had one more task.
Tom was determined to find a place where he could take my picture with the Hollywood hillside sign in the background. You can see the sign from many places in Hollywood, but getting anywhere close enough to take the picture proved a real challenge. We did see some really interesting neighborhoods as we chased the elusive sign about the Hollywood hills. He did succeed, but I will let him post that picture.
Our sunset for this evening was courtesy of Redondo Beach.
Check previous blogs for added pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment