Saturday, February 21, 2009

The Woolly Mammoth's name is Zed

Today CC and I hit the La Brea Tar Pits and George C. Page Museum. You might have already read in the L.A. Times or elsewhere, but if you haven't here's the lowdown: While digging around an underground garage at the former May Co. at Fairfax and Wilshire, workers unearthed "the largest known cache of fossils from the last ice age," including those of a Columbian mammoth (the woolly variety) researchers have now named Zed.

So where else could we have possibly gone this weekend? Especially with the hubs visiting fam in Florida?

That's right. Zed may be dead, baby, but CC and I got to check out at least a few parts of the formerly woolly guy.

It's actually pretty amazing to look at, from behind the window of a sort-of operating theater, the pelvis, jaw and tusk of an animal that was hanging out around the Miracle Mile roughly 10,000 to 40,000 years ago. (Was traffic bad back then? Or did wild stampedes just kinda take care of that?)

If you're in L.A. and haven't visited, it's definitely worth the trip. In addition to eyeing this unexpected find, kids and adults can roam around the museum, which features prehistoric fossils and assembled skeletons of mammoths, sloths and saber-toothed cats.

The museum itself is even tucked into a slope of earth that serves as a great hillside playground for kids. Watching children roll down, trek back up and do it all over again is worth the price of admission alone. (Actually, we got in for free. High-five again, Kirstin!)

Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits
5801 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323-934-PAGE

1 comment:

Little Gray Pixel said...

Fancy us both posting about the La Brea Tar Pits within days of each other! I enjoyed looking into the Zed lab, as well.

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