On December 9th, 20 students from the combined junior and senior Environmental Science class toured the La Brea Tar Pits on Wilshire Boulevard. The museum is part of the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC), which also includes the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park, and features the only active urban fossil dig site in the world. 

Trip leader and Environmental Science Teacher Mr. Taek Chang, and Jeff Selick, a parent chaperone, accompanied the group on its 10-minute walk to the museum. 

In the weeks leading up to the trip, the class had discussed evolution and species exploration so Mr. Chang thought it would be appropriate to bring students to the museum to see some fossils, he said. 

“It’s not just something in TV shows or books, it’s something less than a mile from here,” he said, adding that the trip showed “how geographically close we are to something with such an archeological significance.”

The museum, according to its website, is the only Ice Age fossil site in the world that is being actively excavated in the middle of a city. 

Once the group had finished going through the indoor portion of the museum, which featured fossils and other artifacts, they headed to the front of the park to see a pit of bubbling asphalt with a recreation of a mammoth becoming trapped in “tar.” 

Since the early 1900s, over 100 excavations have been done at the Tar Pits, some of them preserved in sticky asphalt for the last 50,000 years. 

The students spent the first four months of the class learning how the environmental impact that humans make on the world through pollution, using fossil fuels and other parts of everyday life. The class also learned about marine biomes and ocean function, as well as environmental protests and how to be a more conscious consumer.

Across from one of the pits, at an excavation site called Project 23, the group watched museum staff working to clean and preserve huge pieces of fossils that had been found in an underground parking lot down the street.

While they walked through the museum some students discussed the strengths and weaknesses of certain animals and whether they could beat them in a fight. 

“One giant Ice Age bear could take out 100 of me,” said Alfie Drucker.