Late Quaternary Insects of Rancho La Brea and McKittrick, California

1983 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott E. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
Late Quaternary ◽  
Dung Beetles ◽  
Kern County ◽  
Vertebrate Fauna ◽  
Modern Species ◽  
Terminal Pleistocene ◽  
Rancho La Brea

AbstractAsphalt-impregnated sediments at Rancho La Brea (Los Angeles County) and McKittrick (Kern County) in California provide a rich Quaternary insect record. Ages of various sites at Rancho La Brea range from more than 40,000 14C yr B.P. to modern. McKittrick insects studied by W. D. Pierce are not contemporaneous with the late Pleistocene vertebrate fauna, but are only about 7000 14C yr old. The major paleoecological groupings are: (1) ground dwellers, (2) aquatics. (3) scavengers, and (4) miscellaneous. Contrary to conclusions of earlier authors, most specimens represent modern species. Only two apparent terminal Pleistocene extinctions are recognized. both dung beetles (Scarabaeidae).

scholarly journals Project Paleo: Citizen Curation and Community Science at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e25980
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ellwood ◽  
Kathryn Estes-Smargiassi ◽  
Noel Graham ◽  
Gary Takeuchi ◽  
Austin Hendy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
Southern California ◽  
The Body ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Background Information ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Identification Guide ◽  
Rancho La Brea

The School and Teacher Programs of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County have partnered with the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum (LBTPM) and the Invertebrate Paleontology (LACMIP) collection to create two “citizen curation” exercises dubbed “Project Paleo”. Classroom kits were created with unsorted fossils from either LBPTM or from a local invertebrate paleontological field site, to be sorted and identified by local elementary and middle school students and then returned to the museum for curation, analysis, and research purposes. Each kit contains background information about the project and fossils, and an identification guide to assist the students and teachers. The “Project Paleo: Rancho La Brea” kit contains three tablespoons of unsorted fossil matrix from LBTPM’s Project 23. Groups of students learn about past and present food webs of the Los Angeles Basin, then sort the matrix into several categories (bones, plants, other fossils, and rocks) using a guide with drawn examples of each. An online iNaturalist (inaturalist.org) project also serves as an identification resource as well as a platform by which students can contribute photos for identification by staff researchers. This project is aimed at middle schoolers and over 700 students have used the sorting kits. Results will help to recreate past ecosystems of Southern California and help to inform a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project, “A Mouse’s Eye View of Rancho La Brea”. The “Project Paleo: Marine Invertebrates of Southern California” kit produced by LACMIP, contains approximately two cups of washed but unsorted coarse fossil matrix from a salvaged (now destroyed) construction site. This kit is aimed at 5th grade Los Angeles Unified School District classrooms and homeschooling families. Students are asked to sort fossils by species and use included identification cards to identify the sorted fossils to the best of their ability. Results of this project will be included in an NSF funded digitization project and will contribute to research on the paleoecology of Pleistocene Southern California. Early evaluation of both kits has shown positive feedback from students and educators, as well as some room to improve instructions to students. These kits are designed to conform to Next Generation Science Standards while generating useful data for museum scientists. Collections staff are able to outsource the curation of critical data to students who get the experience of handling real museum fossils and contributing to the body of paleontological research.

The Sunland Grizzly

2014 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 56-63
Author(s):  
Josh Sides
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Grizzly Bear ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Founding Director

In 1916, Cornelius Birket Johnson, a Los Angeles fruit farmer, killed the last known grizzly bear in Southern California and the second-to last confirmed grizzly bear in the entire state of California. Johnson was neither a sportsman nor a glory hound; he simply hunted down the animal that had been trampling through his orchard for three nights in a row, feasting on his grape harvest and leaving big enough tracks to make him worry for the safety of his wife and two young daughters. That Johnson’s quarry was a grizzly bear made his pastoral life in Big Tujunga Canyon suddenly very complicated. It also precipitated a quagmire involving a violent Scottish taxidermist, a noted California zoologist, Los Angeles museum administrators, and the pioneering mammalogist and Smithsonian curator Clinton Hart Merriam. As Frank S. Daggett, the founding director of the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art, wrote in the midst of the controversy: “I do not recollect ever meeting a case where scientists, crooks, and laymen were so inextricably mingled.” The extermination of a species, it turned out, could bring out the worst in people.

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