INSIDER
After a flock of 15 wild Canada geese mistakenly landed in the Los Angeles Tar Pit’s hot and sticky goo just over two weeks ago, only two are in recovery.
LOS ANGELES - Black gooey methane bubbles pop on the surface of the Lake Pit outside the La Brea Museum in Los Angeles. More than 100 species of birds and a number of other species were first described after being found at La Brea. But only a few of them formed in the way that La Brea did, capturing the rich, diverse nature of the landscape like a time capsule. About two and a half years ago, researchers at La Brea began using 3D scanning technology. A unique hallmark of the La Brea bones is a shiny, dark brown tone due the liquid asphalt.
Saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and coyotes had different hunting patterns according to a new study of predator fossils found in the La Brea Tar Pits. Over the last decade, DeSantis used a dentistry approach to study the teeth of now-extinct predators like saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and American lions. "Isotopes from the bones previously suggested that the diets of saber-toothed cats and dire wolves overlapped completely, but the isotopes from their teeth give a very different picture," DeSantis said in a statement. "The cats, including saber-toothed cats, American lions and cougars, hunted prey that preferred forests, while it was the dire wolves that seemed to specialize on open-country feeders like bison and horses. Multiple factors likely contributed to the extinction of American lions, saber-toothed cats and dire wolves, including climate change, humans arriving in the same environment or a combination of both factors.
