The La Brea Tar Pits Have Been Sucking in Visitors for Millennia. Paleontologists Are Still Finding Out What Lies Within the Ooze

Unusually for a major tourist attraction, the phrase “death trap” features prominently in the signage and the lore at the La Brea Tar Pits, the celebrated fossil site in the heart of Los Angeles. “Death Trap for Meat-Eaters” says the sign at one site, though in truth it’s a death trap for plant-eaters, too. Over the past 60,000 years or so, animals by the millions, including giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and ten-ton Columbian mammoths were stuck in the goo and died...