BE ADVISED: June 11–14, the FIFA Fan Festival at the Coliseum will cause heavy traffic and limited parking around the Natural History Museum. Please plan ahead and consider taking the Metro E (Expo) Line and exiting at the USC/Expo station.

Tar Pits in Ecuador

On the Santa Elena Peninsula in southwestern Ecuador several asphaltic localities have preserved fossils of birds, small mammals, carnivores, proboscideans and ungulates, as well as large numbers of giant ground sloths! Some of these seeps are consistent with traps similar to what has been inferred for Rancho La Brea, but others appear to constitute fossils deposited in fluvial or estuarine contexts that were preserved by secondary infiltration of asphalt.

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Ecuador
View of the bone bed at 'Tanque Loma'