Out of an abundance of caution for the safety of our visitors and staff, the museum will be closing at 3 pm on December 24 due to the impending storms. The museum will be closed Thursday, December 25 for the Christmas holiday. We will reopen Friday, December 26.

Ice Age Discoveries

Teachers and students raising their arms with an illustration of a sloth in the background

Students will explore what our city looked like 50,000 years ago when Saber-toothed Cats and Dire Wolves roamed, while learning about the plant and animal fossils we find in La Brea Tar Pits.

Program Overview:

  • La Brea Tar Pits Mobile Museum’s Ice Age Discoveries program is a 45 minute program for students in grades K–2. 
  • Dependent on the school’s bell schedule, this program can be scheduled for up to three classes per day.
  • The program is facilitated by two Educators inside the Mobile Museum.

The Ice Age Discoveries program will guide students to:

Learn...

  • Los Angeles, and especially the Tar Pits, has a lot of fossils (finding fossils)
  • Fossils tell us about the past (studying fossils)
  • Ice Age Los Angeles was different in some ways, and similar in others, to Los Angeles today (learning from fossils) 

Feel...

  • A sense of wonder and discovery about Los Angeles and my own neighborhood
  • Empowered to learn, play, imagine, and do science

experience...

  • Doing science and thinking like a scientist
  • The excitement of working together to make discoveries
  • Adding to the story and science of Ice Age Los Angeles
     

La Brea Tar Pits Mobile Museum is made possible in part by the Kenneth T. & Eileen L. Norris Foundation in honor of Lisa D. Hansen.

Supported by generous funding from California Natural Resources Agency, Institute of Museum and Library Resources, and The Ahmanson Foundation.