J. Z. Gilbert seated next to bison skull.

Dr. Gilbert was the first to conduct relatively large- scale and sustained excavations at Rancho La Brea. The fossils he unearthed were used in one of the most popular exhibits on view in our Exposition Park museum when it opened to the public in 1913. And they now form a significant part of the Natural History Museum's holdings from Rancho La Brea and are represented among the collections and displays of the Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries.

James Zacchaeus Gilbert brought scientific education and experiences to his work at Rancho La Brea. Born in North Manchester, Indiana, in 1866, he graduated from Kansas' McPherson College in 1894; he then studied paleontology under S. W. Willston at the University of Kansas, where he obtained a master's degree in 1895. After serving as a high school principal, and as president of Daleville Normal College in Virginia, he accepted a position as a science teacher at Los Angeles High School in 1904.

In September of 1907, Dr. Gilbert was leading a field trip near the tar deposits (then on the western outskirts of the City of Los Angeles) when a partially exposed skull caught the attention of one of his students, Harry Hager. Like so many people who had noticed bones in the asphalt in preceeding years, Mr. Hager presumed it to be from a domestic animal - a sheep, perhaps. But Dr. Gilbert examined it and realized that it belonged to no modern species. A few days later, he returned to the site after school; to complete the tedious work of retrieving the specimen, which he identified as the skull of a lion, "of African type, Felix atrox." Over the next few months he retrieved other fossils from the site, with the permission of the property owner, Madam Ida Hancock Ross, the mother of G. Allan Hancock.

As Chairman of Zoology for the Southern California Academy of Sciences, Dr. Gilbert brought his finds to the attention of his colleagues there. Under the auspices of the academy, he soon obtained permission for more extensive excavations. Under Dr. Gilbert's direction and with funds from the city and county as well as private donations, efforts continued for more than 2 years to remove, identify, and mount fossils from the site.

J. Z. Gilbert seated, writing on a paper and examining a Mammoth skull.

In the years following his Rancho La Brea excavations, Dr. Gilbert worked to sort and identify the thousands of specimens he had uncovered. Mastodon bones and dermal ossicles of giant ground sloths as well as tiny bird bones were each meticulously marked with an identifying code and itemized in his record books.

In 1919, Dr. Gilbert was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from McPherson College. He remained active in the Southern California Academy of Sciences and was elected an honorary life member shortly before his death in 1945.

Photographs

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