Project 23
In 2005, construction workers were building a new parking garage for the Los Angeles Museum of Art, located next to the La Brea Tar Pits. During the digging, they unearthed an incredible find: a previously undiscovered asphalt pit containing 16 fossil deposits. A total of 23 wooden boxes of fossils were taken from the construction site. To date, scientists have found millions of fossils in these deposits, and have so far identified a sabertoothed cat, dire wolves, bison, horses, a giant ground sloth, turtles, snails, clams, millipedes, fish, gophers, an American lion, and a nearly intact Columbian mammoth skeleton, including the skull and 10-foot-long tusks. The mammoth, nicknamed Zed, is the first nearly complete individual mammoth to be found near the Tar Pits. Labeled Project 23, paleontologists are currently working at the Page Museum lab to separate and identify all the various fossils found in these 16 deposits. The bones from dierent animals are usually jumbled together, and researchers lay them out on a grid on top of the deposit so they can record where each bone came from. A datum point is established to measure the depth of the fossils, and tools are selected to do the work based on the kind of dirt surrounding the fossils. For hard areas that lack fossils, hammers and chisels are used. When working near fossils, scientists use dental picks. Visitors to the Page Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits can watch this process, seeing scientists work on the contents of the 23 boxes in real-time.