Los Angeles Page Museum
Located at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits, the Page Museum is a fascinating attraction, full of fossils, bones and information about the specimens found in the Tar Pits. Both kids and adults will immensely enjoy this museum, which showcases the animals of the Ice Age that roamed LA thousands of years ago.

Opened in 1977, the museum was a gift from philanthropist George C. Page. He moved from Nebraska to California in 1917, and was fascinated by fossils and the Tar Pits, which led to him offering to finance the creation of the museum in 1973. Now visitors are able to bear witness to the excavations and exploration done on this amazing preservation site.

The Museum has over thirty exhibits, all of which provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of paleontology and the natural history of the California area.

One of the best of the exhibits is the Glass walled working area for actual Paleontologists. Visitors can watch these people hard at work, cleaning and researching the various fossils that are constantly being brought in from the Tar Pits.

The actual skeletons of many of the animals found here are on display at the museum.

Another exhibit holds life-size robotic animal sculptures, that sound and move just like the real thing. These provide for an interesting comparison to the skeletons, and allows visitors to get an idea of what these creatures really looked like.

One of the exhibits actually holds the only human remains ever found in the Tar Pits, those of a 9000-year-old Chumash Indian-like woman. Research suggests that the woman was actually murdered before being thrown into the liquid asphalt.

For a better idea of the history of the area, take some time to see the film that runs in the museum as well.

To see where much of the Tar comes bubbling to the surface, take a walk through Hancock Park. This mostly-grassy park is a nice place to relax and let the kids burn off some steam, and there is an actual excavation site you can visit, where scientists are digging for fossils.

Website www.tarpits.org