La Brea Tar Pits Remodel Task: 23 Fossil Boxes Await Sorting

By Elena Vasquez

Twenty-three boxes of fossils from a 2006 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) excavation still await sorting at La Brea Tar Pits. The backlog stretches 20 years from the discovery of Zed, a 9,000-pound Columbian mammoth. The report gives no completion date for that work.

What did LACMA uncover in 2006?

LACMA uncovered Zed in 2006 while excavating for an underground garage nearby. A bulldozer sliced six inches from the mammoth's roughly 40,000-year-old skull. Work stopped, and crews uncovered the animal. They packed Zed and moved the remains next door to La Brea Tar Pits.

At 9,000 pounds, Zed was about 80 percent intact. The report describes the Columbian mammoth as one of the biggest Ice Age creatures ever. The animal belonged to an ancient mammal species related to the modern elephant.

The excavation produced more than the mammoth at the center of the report. Another 23 boxes contain remains from additional fossil deposits found during LACMA's work, extending the preparation challenge beyond Zed and into material staff still need to examine.

Zed was only one part of what the excavation recovered.

What can visitors see in the preparation lab?

At a glass viewing area, a boy in a cap yelled, “Look at all those dinosaur bones,” and tapped the glass as researchers boxed fossils behind him.

A second boy, slathered in sunblock, tapped back and replied, “Those aren’t dinosaurs,” while pointing toward pictures of ancient animals lining the lab. He added, “Those are mammoth bones,” with a knowing smile.

The report calls the boy right, with one caveat: “Sort of.” The children had focused on a piece of bone from Zed. The scene joined a visitor's mistaken label, dinosaurs, to the mammoth identification inside the lab.

The source calls digging through the boxes a paleontologist's dream because they hold further fossil deposits from the excavation.

Twenty years after the 2006 discovery, staff still had not finished sorting the material.

Why has the sorting lasted 20 years?

The numbers define the task. There are 23 separate boxes, each holding remains from the same excavation. Zed weighed 9,000 pounds and was about 80 percent intact, with six inches missing from its roughly 40,000-year-old skull. The broader collection remains under preparation.

But volume alone does not reveal the schedule. The report supplies no dimensions for the boxes, no count of individual fossils, no staffing figure and no daily processing rate for the sorting backlog. It also provides no estimated completion date. The available figures therefore cannot establish when the backlog will end.

The scale remains substantial: 23 boxes gathered in one excavation were still being sorted two decades later.

For the remodel, the 23 boxes remain an unfinished part of the excavation record.

What does the backlog mean for the remodel?

The report presents fossil preparation as the immediate obstacle. The physical scope of the remodel remains unspecified in the available account. Yet the collection task is concrete: 23 boxes, each holding remains from the 2006 excavation.

The report gives the remodel no named designer, construction milestone, gallery program or public reopening date, leaving the physical program and collection schedule largely disconnected. It gives the fossil work no completion date either. The two schedules therefore remain disconnected. The scientific task is measurable only in broad terms: 23 boxes, 20 years and no stated endpoint.

The practical next step is narrower. Staff must first finish sorting the excavation material. The institution can then determine how those finds fit the remodel.