It might have been a good idea to know that Alex was terrified of dinosaurs before I took him to see a giant Mastodon at the Page Museum La Brea Tar Pits. One roar from the mechanical mammoth, and our museum experience quickly ended.Crude oil seeps from the ground in the middle of the Los Angeles financial district on Wilshire Boulevard and every once in awhile, the paleontologists there excavate a fossil from the last Ice Age.
Millions of years ago, Los Angeles lay beneath the Pacific Ocean. When the ocean receded about 100,000 years ago, pools of asphalt formed. Before the bankers of Wilshire trapped our money, animals were trapped in the tar pools. Literally millions of animal and plant fossils have been pulled from the tar. A Fishbowl Laboratory gives visitors a chance to see the restoration process and in the summer Pit 91 is the longest running paleontological excavation site in the world -- operating since 1969.
For future dinosaur diggers, the giant Shasta Ground Sloth, the Sabertoothed cat and Mammoths can't be missed. For little guys who can't quite handle a T-Rex, you may want to save the experience until they're ready for Jurassic Park.
