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La Brea Tar Pits. Step into an Ice Age adventure. Unearth mysteries deep beneath your feet, witness fossil discoveries, and explore exhibits of mammoth proportions. Dive into a unique journey through time, as you investigate the science and history preserved by the Tar Pits.
The La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground for tens of thousands of years.
Enjoying Hancock Park. Hancock Park is nestled among the museum and the Tar Pits. It's a fun community resource where boot camp participants meet and train, kids play next to super-sized Ice Age mammals, and Angelenos and tourists stroll and picnic.
The tar pits are thick, sticky pools of viscous asphalt (the lowest grade of crude oil) that has oozed to the surface from a large petroleum reservoir. They have yielded the fossilized skulls and bones of trapped prehistoric animals as well as one partial human skeleton and many human artifacts.
Plan your visit to La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Get tickets for admission, exhibits, 3D movies and films, shows and tours.
Tar pits form when crude oil seeps to the surface through fissures in the Earth's crust; the light fraction of the oil evaporates, leaving behind the heavy tar, or asphalt, in sticky pools. Tar from the La Brea tar pits was used for thousands of years by local native Americans, as a glue and as waterproof caulking for baskets and canoes.
Right in the heart of L.A. sits the world’s most powerful gateway to the Ice Age. The asphalt seeps at La Brea Tar Pits are the only active urban fossil dig site in the world. Plants and animals from the last 50,000 years are discovered here every day.
Located in the heart of metropolitan Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits are one of the world’s most famous fossil localities. Explore the world’s only active, urban Ice Age excavation site.
La Brea Tar Pits have been identified by IUGS as the richest Pleistocene (“Ice Age”) fossil site on Earth, and as the key paleontological site that has shaped the understanding of this time period for both scientists and the public.
The 2021 science-fiction television series tells the story of Angelenos falling through a giant sinkhole near the La Brea Tar Pits (hence, La Brea ), only to find themselves in prehistoric Los Angeles.
