Los Angeles With Kids: Page Museum La Brea Tar Pits

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A visit to Los Angeles with kids will not be complete if we didn’t visit the Page Museum – La Brea Tar Pits. It’s one of the best things to do with kids in Los Angeles. I have read about this museum from other travel blogger and put it on our to-do list for our quick jaunt to Los Angeles. After a fun day at the El Capitan theatre, it’s time for a bit of educational trip for the kids.

The Page Museum AKA the Ice Age Museum

The Page Museum La Brea Tar Pits is a research and educational facility and one of the best museum with the most extensive collection of extinct Ice Age fossils.

It helps that our kids have watched the Ice Age movies countless times. So it’s nice to be able to point out the extinct animals and they were able to make a connection. It took quite sometimes for them to grab the concept of ‘extinction’ because they still can see it on TV.

Perfect Size Museum for Kids

We went there during the weekday so it was very easy to find parking along the street. There is also parking inside the park and you can get the discount when you purchased museum admission tickets.

The museum itself is only one story. But the display and exhibition is very adequate to give you the knowledge about the ice age creatures.

With small size, it allows kids to remain engage without getting bored with the display.

The Coolest Things to See at The Page Museum

One of the coolest part of the Page Museum at La Brea Tar Pits has to be the Fish Bowl. The Fish Bowl is the area where researchers are working on the on-going project at the tar pits mostly cleaning and cataloging the fossils.

Kids (and adults) were mesmerized by the whole thing. (I don’t think I can work in that fish bowl. Too much pressure with people watching.) They were able to see how scientists and volunteers are working and cleaning those fossils. We also stopped by the theatre room to watch the short movie about the history of the Page Museum. It’s very fun and engaging and I highly recommend it. It will provide you with the background and history of the museum in a quick and fun way.

The Active Tar Pits in the City

After we walked around the Page Museum, we headed out to the most popular spot in the whole park – Tar Pits in Hancock Park. The Tar Pit give us a glimpse to the real Indiana Jones wanna-be like myself. We visited in Fall so there was no working excavation going on at that moment.

Kids get a chance to see how the real tar pits look like as there are many fenced-off tar pits all around the Hancock Park. However, the most well-known one is Pit 91. Pit 91 is tar pit that has been reopened in 1969 and the excavation work continues until today. We saw the area where the volunteers carefully excavated specimen inch by inch during the Summer.

New Discovery at Rancho La Brea- Project 23

However, the work in Pit 91 is temporarily suspended. In 2006, there was a new discovery of new fossils during the parking garage construction. Twenty three boxes of asphaltic deposits were moved to the Page Museum for further work. Hence, Project 23 is born. The name of Project 23 came from the 23 extract crates.

So far, they have discovered over 700 measured specimens including a large pre-historic American Lion skull, lion bones, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, juvenile horse and bison, teratorn, coyotes, lynx, and ground sloths. For the current news and update, check out the Excavatrix blog.

It was a great fun day with our kids. They really enjoyed the visit. I think the Page Museum La Brea Tar Pit is one of the coolest place to visit in Los Angeles with kids.

Disclaimer: We paid for our own admission tickets. I will always let you know if I receive the complimentary tickets. And there will never be any outside influence on how I write my post.

Check out other Travelers Photo at Delicious Baby.