LA BREA TAR PITS EXPLANATION

La Brea Tar Pits

Death Trap or Something Else?

Since 1909, more than one million fossil bones have been recovered and housed at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits located in Los Angeles, California.

The historical record at La Brea is over 200 years long.  The tar deposit was discovered in 1769 by the Spanish, the fossils were first found in 1875 and the formal fossil excavation and documentation began in the early 1900’s.  More recent significant historical events occurred in 1963 when Rancho La Brea was designated as a National Natural Landmark and in 1977 when the on site Page Museum was opened. 

There have been found a large variety of fossils at La Brea since the early 1900’s.  The Page Museum officially estimates that fossil bones representing 231 species of vertebrates, 159 kinds of plants and 234 kinds of invertebrates have been identified. 

Fossils of LaBrea

Larger Mammals:

Sabertooth cat (Smilodon)

Dire wolf (Canis dirus)

Giant ground sloth (Paramylodon)

Ancient bison (Bison antiquus)

Western horse (Equus occidentalis)

Western camel (Camelops hesternus)

Stilt legged llama (Hemiauchenia)

Columbia mammoth (Mammuthus columbi)

Giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus)

Black bear (Ursus americanus)

Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos)

Timber wolf (Canis lupus)

The extinct Dire wolves are the most common large mammals from LaBrea, with several thousand individuals represented in the Page Museum collections.  In the La Brea Museum there are displayed 404 upper skull sections of the Dire Wolf all of which were recovered from the tar pits. 
 

The remains of over 2000 individuals of Smilodon or saber toothed cat rank second in quantity.  The Smilodon is the state fossil for the state of California.

Even the famous Columbian mammoth is represented by skeletal remains at La Brea. 
 

If you go to the internet website of the Page Museum at www.tarpits.org you will read the official explanation for the accumulation of these fossils as follows:

Official Explanation LaBrea Tar Pits

“Asphalt is very sticky, particularly when it is warm.  The warm temperatures from late spring to early fall would have provided the optimum conditions for entrapment in asphalt.  Small mammals, birds and insects inadvertently coming into contact with it would be immobilized as if they were trapped in flypaper.  The feet and legs of heavier animals might sink two or three inches below the surface.  Depending on the time of day or year, strong and healthy animals may have managed to escape, but others would have been held fast until they died of exhaustion, or fell prey to passing predators.  Under the right conditions, a single mired large herbivore would attract the attention of a dozen or more hungry carnivorous birds and mammals, some of which would find themselves trapped, providing food for other carnivores.  This cycle repeated during the 30,000 years that fossils were accumulating at Rancho La Brea.  It is estimated that one entrapment episode involving ten large mammals every decade would furnish more than enough fossil remains to account for all the large mammal and bird fossils collected since the turn of the 20^th century (over 1 million!).”

So, that is the official explanation.  It of course is designed to match uniformitarian geological and biological presuppositions of evolution and millions of years.  Since it is the official theory it is widely accepted by scientists and the public, although the entrapment theory has failed to give convincing answers to some key evidentiary questions which are indicated by the following observations:  

La Brea Big Anomalies:

1.  The physical characteristics of the pits do not seem to allow large entrapment episodes.

2.  The tremendous fragmentation and chaotic intermingling of the bones into bone jumbles does not indicate entrapment.

3.  The numerical preponderance of carnivores does not match the conditions of the natural world.

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the La Brea Tar Pits probably knows the official explanation for the accumulation of fossils in the tar pits.  What most people do not know is that there are other secular as well as creationist theories which are accepted instead by the real researchers.  These scientists have different theories because they have found that the evidence is unable to support the entrapment theory.

Here are some of the alternate theories: 
1.  “The Fluvial Transport Theory.”

2.  “The Post-Flood Catastrophism Theory.”

3.  “The Genesis Flood Theory.”

So, we have heard the official theory for the fossils before.  The death trap theory, which was first hypothesized in 1906, says that animals were trapped in the tar and then numerous carnivores came running and got trapped as well.  Here is Mr. Bill Weston’s (Creationist researcher) summary statement regarding the official theory and any theory which proposes large animal entrapment in tar: 
Weston’s Summary Statement for the Entrapment Theory:

“Although generally accepted by the scientific establishment, there are no observational or experimental data that show that tar puddles have the viscosity to capture large animals, including such mega fauna as elephants and bison.  Even local anecdotes about horses and cows standing trapped in tar puddles, whether true or not, cannot properly be called scientific proof if they lack such routine items of information as time, place, and names of witnesses.  Considering the lack of solid evidence, the tar puddle theory does not merit further discussion.”

Bill Weston, CRS Quarterly, Vol. 39 No 2, Dec. 2002

Earlier I listed the major anomalies of the Tar Pits that tend to discredit the entrapment theory.  The first one was the physical characteristics of the tar pits.  In summary what this means is that the shapes of many of the pits that the fossil bones are found in do not lend themselves to trapping numerous large animals.  For example, tar pit #16 was only four feet wide with vertical sides.  Pit 16 then went down from the top 21 feet before it tapered three more feet to a three-inch wide chimney – the opening through which the asphalt entered from deeper in the earth’s crust.

Bones from numerous dire wolves, saber tooth cats, coyotes, camels, bison, horses, and even a bulky mastodon had been found in pit 16 during the period 1905 to 1915.  It is difficult to imagine how all of these large animals managed to squeeze into a hole not much wider than a bathtub.

It is interesting to note that the County of Los Angeles dug 96 test holes in 1913 in order to find pits with fossils in them.  Of these 96 test holes only 16 turned up pits with significant quantities of bones.  By 1915 all of these pits had been emptied of their bones, the bones were packed in wooden crates and placed in storage.  Pit #91 was partially excavated and then reburied.  Then in 1969 pit 91 was reactivated and methodical excavations continue through this day.  
 

This more meticulous identification of position, type and orientation of fossils (and not just fossil bones, but all types of fossils) has contributed a wealth of detailed scientific information that was previously unknown.  This new information has not been kind toward the entrapment theory but has been helpful for creationist theory.  At about six feet below the surface of the ground was found an ancient streambed that ran from east to west and curved toward the south wall.  Also found were layers of sediment which would indicate that moving water contributed to formation of the contents of pit 91.  Here is a quote from some secular scientists regarding these findings:  

Evidence of Fluvial Action in Pits

“The fossil remains were frequently admixed with gravel lenses, cobbles, and pebble clasts of fluviatile origin.  Freshwater limestone lenses, mollusks, and hardened asphaltum deposits were interbedded with bone-bearing sediment in several of the pits….Both the molluscan faunas and the limestone strata indicate intervals during which separate tar seeps were submerged, possibly by ephemeral lakes or ponds, or meandering stream channels.”

Woodard and Marcus, Rancho LaBrea fossil deposits:  A re-evaluation, 1973, p. 56.

Woodard and Marcus also concluded that many of the pits were too small to have acted as asphaltic traps.  Here is their quote from page 63 of their findings.

Pits Are Too Small for Entrapment

“Many bone pockets, although containing numerous disarticulated skeletal remains, were too small to have served as asphaltic traps.”

Woodard and Marcus, Rancho LaBrea fossil deposits: A re-evaluation, 1973, p.63

Even though some of the pits were larger, there were enough of the small pits to present yet another serious challenge to the animal entrapment theory.

The next great question is why there is such a tremendous amount of bone fragmentation and chaotic bone intermingling.  Let me quote Mr. Weston’s description of more recent pit findings as written in his March 2002 paper: 

Broken & Mixed Up Bones!

“As excavators removed the contents of these four pits, they noticed that the tar had preserved the bones to a remarkable degree.  Even such delicate features as the courses for nerves and blood vessels were discernable.  Also found were various kinds of insects in all their minute detail, including wings and antennae…. The superior grade of preservation that characterized the individual specimens stood in stark contrast to the ravaged appearance of the fossil material as a whole.  A majority of the bones were damaged in some way: sharp-edged broken ends, splinters, cracks, impact depressions, deep grooves, broken-off chips, and/or heavy abrasions…. In addition, the bones were in an entangled mass, closely pressed together, and interlocked in all possible ways.  After separating out the bones, scientists could only guess how the parts of individual animals matched up to one another.  They also came to realize that the pits were missing a lot of skeletal parts that they had originally expected to find.”

Doesn’t this sound to you a lot like some huge water catastrophe had overtaken these creatures whose bones were found in the tar pits?  However logical this conclusion might be, it was and is and will be unacceptable to those who are totally presuppositionally committed to the uniformitarian philosophy.  Thus we have the continued investment by so many in the tar entrapment theory.

The third big mystery which continues to baffle uniformitarian scientists is the numerical preponderance of carnivores in the tar pits.  Whereas wolf-to-deer populations in Canada and the United States show a ratio of 100 to 150 herbivores for every carnivore, the La Brea Tar Pits ratio is inverse to that.  In other words the La Brea findings showed that carnivores represent 85% of the total number of individual animals.  In addition flesh-eating birds are about 70% of the total number of birds.  The question is why would an eagle, for example, be more vulnerable to entrapment compared to pigeons and doves?

The best explanation that Uniformitarians can come up with is as follows:  
 Why So Many Meat Eaters?

“For every large herbivore in the collections there is a sabertooth, a coyote, and four dire wolves.  These proportions, so unlike those of natural communities, suggest that the carnivores became selectively trapped when feeding from herbivores that fell victim to the seeps.  The large number of flesh eating birds has been explained similarly.”

Rancho LaBrea, Death Trap and Treasure Trove, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation, 2002, p. 15.

Mr. Weston reports that there is some scientifically gathered evidence that this explanation is not supported by the facts.  In 1934 a wildlife specialist in Grand Canyon National Park noticed that birds were getting caught in a tar pit that had been left over from a road construction project several years previously.  The wildlife specialist, Mr. A.E. Borell found bird carcasses in all stages of decomposition from skeletons to those that had just recently died.  Mr. Borell found that the contents of the pit consisted of 123 individual birds of 13 different species.  Six of these birds were hawks.  Thirty days later a repeat visit found eight more dead birds in the pit, none of which were hawks.  This ratio of 131 herbivores to six carnivores reflects the expected balance in nature, and is inverse to the ratio found at Rancho La Brea.

So, we have found that many of the individual tar pits were not of the proper size or shape to have captured so many large animals.  We have found that the bone jumbles of the tar pits do not indicate that individual animals were trapped in tar.  And, we have found that a preponderance of carnivores just does not make any sense as a component of any tar entrapment theory.

But, that is not all.  There are other anomalies which indicate that the entrapment theory is incorrect and some sort of catastrophic pre-event is a more likely explanation for what is found at the tar pits.  These additional anomalies are: 

Additional La Brea Anomalies

1.  The lack of teeth marks on herbivore bones.

2.  The total lack of soft tissues in the fossils.

3.  The numerical superiority of water beetles among insect species.

4.  Water saturation of wood debris found in the pits.

So why do these additional anomalous evidences point away from animal entrapment and toward some sort of a catastrophic diluvial event?  Let’s take them one at a time to see if we can find out. 

First let’s consider the lack of teeth marks on herbivore bones found in the tar pits. Remember that La Brea (and there are similar fossil sites in Peru and in France) has a preponderance of carnivore fossils.  If these fossil sites were locations of feeding frenzies there should be all manner of teeth marks on the herbivore bones found – but there are very few.  A catastrophic theory put forward in 1894 by an English geologist (Mr. Joseph Prestwich) who looked at the evidence from the site in France makes some very logical sense.  According to Mr. Prestwich, a gigantic local flood submerged Western Europe.  Prestwich theorized that the flood would naturally drive the animals in the plains to run for higher ground.  Frantically fleeing in terror and cowed by the common danger, carnivores and herbivores alike sought refuge in some of the higher areas, and together suffered the same fate whenever the hill was isolated and not high enough to allow escape from the on rushing flood.  Prestwich hypothesized that the dead animals would form a mat on the surface of the water and eventually body parts detached and fell irregularly onto the submerged surfaces below.

This theory would also explain the preponderance of wolf bones since wolves are generally stronger, more resourceful, and more socially organized than other animals.  They would therefore be among the last to be over taken.

This type of thinking also coincides with creationist interpretation of the geologic rock record in general.  For example, in 1961 Whitcomb and Morris in their book the Genesis Flood explained the depth of various fossil remains as due to generally ecological causes. 

Higher levels of fossils in the earth’s strata would be due to the following reasons:

1.  Animals of increasing mobility would have increasing ability to postpone inundation.

2.  Animals of increasing elevation of habitat would have more time before the rising Flood would attain stages sufficient to overtake and cover them.

Next let’s consider the effects of tar and water on the fossil remains which have been discovered in these tar pits.  A large portion of Mr. Weston’s research had to do with these effects.  I encourage you to study his work if you would like the details, but what he found in a nutshell are the following:

          A.  Petroleum or oil tends to act as a preservative for fossils, perhaps for thousands of years.

          B.  Water tends to act to facilitate the decomposition and desiccation of insect and other animal bodies.

So, the fact that there is no soft tissue on the fossil bones at La Brea even though they are encased in a preservative, very likely indicates that there has been definite water action on the bones and insect bodies.  The fact that there is a preponderance of water beetle fossils in the pits also would seem to indicate that water may have been a large factor in the accumulation of these fossils.  Mr. Weston summarizes this by saying:
“The high concentration of water beetles and water fowl at Pleistocene fossil sites [like La Brea and the other sites we have been discussing] may be an effect of the Genesis Flood.  As creatures moved toward higher ground in their efforts to survive, the ones that could swim or float would have had an advantage over the strictly terrestrial types.  The species living in the mountains would have had an advantage over the ones living one the plain…Eventually the Flood overwhelmed them all, but those that survived longer into the Flood period would be buried in the upper, or Pleistocene, levels of sedimentation while the ones that died earlier would be scattered in the lower strata.”

Therefore, from the evidence previously covered in this presentation, we can see the Genesis Flood as a source of disarticulated bones which eventually were transported and redistributed to lower elevations by post-Flood fluvial activity.  Bones may have traveled hundreds of miles or more from the original habitat of the living animals to their final resting places on the plains.  Some bones and soggy wood debris entered a small number of funnel shaped pits, newly formed by natural gas blowouts caused by earthquake tremors.  Oil from ruptured underground reservoirs seeped into these pits and flowed over the surrounding bone-strewn plain.  This lake of oil thickened into tar, and its surface developed a hard crust, which sealed the pits and kept the matrix in a semi liquid state.  

Whether this interpretation of the evidence is the correct explanation for the La Brea Tar Pit fossils or not may never be known for sure this side of heaven.  But, it seems clear to this investigator that this hypothesis provides tremendous explanatory advantages over the official entrapment theory.  Therefore, I would conclude that the fossils of the La Brea Tar Pits are probably the result of the Genesis Flood some 4400 years ago and the La Brea Tar Pits are definitely not the “Death Trap of the Ages.”