Story Topics | La Brea Tar Pits

Walking With Giant Sloths

Take a (virtual) summer road trip to White Sands National Park to explore the fossilized tracks of giant ground sloths

Life recreations American Mammoth Colombian Mastodon

Mammoths vs Mastodons: A La Brea Tar Pits Trunk Show

Discover the differences between Columbian mammoths and American mastodons

Bloomberg Connects Header Image depicting the screen of a guide user

Digital Guide to La Brea Tar Pits

Our new audio tour lets everyone explore the La Brea Tar Pits' history and research, even while the museum is closed, with Bloomberg Connects' free digital guide.

Research and Collections

Elephant Hill Community Nature Celebration and Habitat Survey

Join community members and scientists, Saturday, October 14, to celebrate and study nature on Elephant Hill, an open space in North East L.A. valuable to humans and wildlife.

Life reconstruction of fire at La Brea Tar Pits during the Pleistocene as bison are stuck during a wildfire

Why Did the Ice Age Titans Go Extinct?

A new study reveals that human impacts in an environment made fire-prone by climate change and herbivore loss led to large mammals vanishing from southern California.

Geek Out in an Ice Age Daydream

Tar AR brings Ice Age animals back to L.A.

Mammoths, meet the metaverse

Paleontologists from La Brea Tar Pits develop a whole herd of scientifically accurate extinct animals to use in AR and VR

Earth's First Giant

The two-meter skull of a humongous new ichthyosaur species, Earth’s first known giant creature, reveals how both the extinct marine reptiles and modern whales became giants.

Sabertooth cat skeleton and notecard with field notes

Get Sedimental With La Brea Tar Pits

Help transcribe 'dig' field notes for fossils excavated since 1969

Time Machine Window: A Look Back at Ice Age Los Angeles

Take a look at Los Angeles through Ice Age lenses