Story Topics | Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

Extinction and Survival at La Brea Tar Pits

Groundbreaking new research from La Brea Tar Pits curators finds that in California, 13,000 years ago, huge Ice Age mammals that had roamed the landscape for many millennia, suddenly ceased to exist. The cause? Humans, catastrophic fires, and an ecosystem made vulnerable by climate change.

Life reconstruction of fire at La Brea Tar Pits during the Pleistocene as bison are stuck during a wildfire

Why Did the Ice Age Titans Go Extinct?

A new study reveals that human impacts in an environment made fire-prone by climate change and herbivore loss led to large mammals vanishing from southern California.

Playing With Fire: Extinction and Survival at La Brea Tar Pits

In California, 13,000 years ago, huge Ice Age mammals that had roamed the landscape for many millennia, suddenly ceased to exist. The cause? Humans, catastrophic fires, and an ecosystem made vulnerable by climate change.

Children looking at flowers with magnifiers

Naturalist Nature in L.A.

Nature Gardens Turn 10

A look back—and forward–at all the nature thriving in NHM’s Nature Gardens.

Year of the Rabbit

Celebrate the 2023 Lunar New Year with highlights from the collection

Depth Perceptions

NHM’s marine collections illuminate the shape of life in deep water.

Saber-toothed Cat 101

La Brea Tar Pits presents everything you need to know about saber-toothed cats.

Burro-Ing Into the Past

How introduced donkeys and the indigenous pumas that love (to hunt) them are helping to resurrect extinct food webs in Death Valley

L.A. Bats Under the Overpass

Counting the bats roosting along the L.A. River

Ailurarctos reconstruction Mauricio Anton

Research and Collections

Eating bamboo? It's all in the wrist.

An ancient fossil reveals the earliest panda on an exclusively bamboo diet and the evolutionary history of panda's false thumbs

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