Sloths and Mammoths and Sabertooth Cats, Oh My!

Last week, we went on our 2nd annual family vacation to Carlsbad, California. We had such a great time and had many wonderfully entertaining adventures. One of our first stops was a hour away at the La Brea Tarpits in L.A. I haven't been there since I was a little girl, but it is truly an amazing museum. We saw ground sloths, giant mammoths with huge curling tusks and many dire wolves. It is mindboggling to think that these creatures roamed the Los Angeles metropolis between 10,000-40,000 years ago. My favorite part was a windowed area that allows museum goers to watch paleontologists carefully excavate teeth, bones and other fossil fragments. Jack was fascinated by the American Lion and other big cats and Pit 91, a "tarpit" that has been excavated nearly continuously over the last 4 decades. Recently the museum next door was putting in a new parking structure and uncovered 300,000 new fossils to be studied.