The mammoth under the parking lot

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: February 17, 2009 7:40:16 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The mammoth under the parking lot

[Note:  This item comes from friend Janos Gereben.  DLH]

From: janosG <janosg () gmail com>
Date: February 17, 2009 4:20:24 PM PST
Subject: The mammoth under the parking lot

<http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fossils18-2009feb18,0,7775847.story 
>

A nearly intact mammoth, dubbed Zed, is among the remarkable  
discoveries near the La Brea tar pits. It's the largest known deposit  
of Pleistocene ice age fossils.

Los Angeles Times
Major cache of fossils unearthed in L.A.
By Thomas H. Maugh II
3:02 PM PST, February 17, 2009

The largest known deposit of fossils from the last ice age has been  
found in what might seem to be the unlikeliest of places -- under an  
old May Co. parking lot in L.A.'s tony Miracle Mile shopping district.

Researchers from the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea tar pits  
have barely begun extracting the fossils from the sandy, tarry matrix  
of soil, but they expect the find to double the size of the museum's  
collection from the period, already the largest in the world.

Among their finds, to be formally announced Wednesday, is the nearly  
intact skeleton of a Columbian mammoth -- named Zed by researchers --  
a prize discovery because only bits and pieces of mammoths have  
previously been found in the tar pits.

But researchers are perhaps even more excited about finding smaller  
fossils of tree trunks, turtles, snails, clams, millipedes, fish,  
gophers and even mats of oak leaves. The first excavators at La Brea  
threw out similar items in their haste to find prized animal bones,  
and crucial information about the period was lost.

"This gives us the opportunity to get a detailed picture of what life  
was like 10,000 to 40,000 years ago" in the Los Angeles Basin, said  
John Harris, chief curator at the Page. The find will make the museum  
"the major library of life in the Pleistocene ice age," he said.

<snip>
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