[Insect buzzing] ♪ Masters: Never done anything like this before.

Man: No, not every day that you excavate a 40,000-year-old dire wolf.

Masters: 40,000 years?

Man: Yeah.

Masters: Oh, wow.

Man: This is approximately 40,000 to 45,000 years old that we're gonna be working on.

♪ Masters: Does this tell you much about what the world was like here, what the environment was like, the climate?

Woman: The fact that we have a dire wolf here in Los Angeles does not tell us a great deal about what Los Angeles specifically was like during the Ice Age, but all of those small fossils that you can't even see right now that are in the dirt adhering to that dire wolf jaw, these are like the seeds of plants and the wings of insects and-- Masters: This stuff right here?

Woman: That right there, and you can't see it now, but when we get it cleaned and under a scope, you will be able to see it.

♪ Announcer: This episode of "Lost LA" was made possible in part by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation, a Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropy, and the Frieda Berlinski Foundation.

♪ Masters: For more than 100 years, scientists at the La Brea Tar Pits have been pulling all sorts of prehistoric beasts out of this natural time capsule.

♪ And if you think there's nothing left to find, think again.

Now the hunt is on for microfossils, so small, you need a microscope to examine them.

Woman: This is a beetle here.

You can see the elytra.

Masters: And as my friend, Jessie George explained, these tiny discoveries have some big stories to tell.

♪ This is really such a treat to be able to excavate this.

I don't think you let a lot of visitors do this!

Man: No.

Masters: It's kind of, like, looking back in time a little bit.

I mean... Man: You're looking back in time right now.

Masters: Yeah!

Man: Like, literally.

Masters: Yeah, that's wow.

What a cool job you have.

Man: Yeah.

Yeah.

There's also a ground sloth in here, saber-tooth cats, multiple dire wolves, multiple coyotes, bobcats, and then tons of plants, insects, and other small mammals and birds.

Lots of birds.

Masters: So, the stuff that I'm scraping away and brushing into this, this is all valuable stuff, too.

Man: A teaspoon of that can contain up to 100 fossils.

Masters: So you said this is 40,000 years old.

Woman: Yes.

This is a set of deposits here that were found pretty deep in the ground when the art museum next door to us built an underground parking garage about 14 years ago.

That's part of why they weren't discovered 100 years ago when a lot of the La Brea Tar Pits were discovered.

It's because they were so deep.

And because they're deeper, they also tend to be older.

More sediment has had more time to accumulate on top of them.

And so these represent sort of our oldest deposits.

It's before the last time the Earth was at its coldest point, before it started warming into the current interglacial that we're in now.

Jessie: No single line of fossil evidence is ever giving you the full picture.

So all of those parts are really necessary to illustrate what Los Angeles was like back in the Ice Age.

Woman: Yeah.

When we have these perspectives, we can really see things like responses to climate change or responses to the arrival or removal of particular species or responses to human actions, things like fires and other things that humans do to ecosystems that give us a much more holistic and comprehensive understanding.

And we can pick up cycles that operate on scales that just aren't picked up in modern ecological studies.

Masters: I guess none of us here want the animals we know to end up like this dire wolf.

Woman: Right.

Yeah.

So we're hoping that by studying and understanding both the causes and also the effects of this last extinction event, which was the biggest extinction event since the dinosaurs disappeared, we're hoping that we can help to prevent further extinctions today.

Man: So effectively, you've excavated everything that you need to.

You've done an outline and made little trenches all the way around the fossil.

Masters: Yeah.

Man: And it's gotten to the point where it's loose.

Masters: OK. Man: And so, very gently, you want to grab the middle of the fossil where it's most robust.

And you're not gonna break it, and you're gonna wiggle it slowly, and then gently pull up.

Masters: OK. Yeah.

I'm wiggling it, and gently pull it up.

Man: And gently pull up at the same time.

Masters: OK, here we go.

Oh, it's a little sticky.

Oh!

I hope I didn't break it.

Did I break it?

Man: No, you're good.

So it came-- Masters: Oh, wow!

Man: Came out with another fossil.

Masters: Oh, look at that.

You can see the--like the surface of it.

Man: Yeah.

Masters: They are really, like, shiny.

Man: So you see that's the bottom of the jaw right here.

And then these--this is a cracked area, where it's fragmented and his tooth is popping out.

But it looks like the bone is right on top of the teeth, and the teeth aren't fully erupted yet.

Masters: Amazing.

Man: This jaw should probably be out here.

Masters: OK. Man: So it's not complete, but it's a really nice fossil.

Masters: Bag it?

Jessie: And then all that sediment you've got on there, too, is potentially full of, full of microfossils that's gonna tell us so much about environment and climate.

Man: So, you're gonna take that over to the lab, where you'll prepare fossils just like that and start looking for all the small stuff that's hidden in all the matrix.

♪ Masters: Wow.

Woman: Isn't it cool?

Masters: This is a cool place, yeah.

Woman: Yeah.

So this is our fossil lab.

And this is where all of the fossils that we dig up out in the excavation site come next to get cleaned and repaired, if necessary, and eventually identified and studied.

This is Stephanie.

She's our lab manager, and Connie, a lab preparator here.

So, Nathan just excavated a dire wolf jaw out in box 9, and we thought we'd bring it in here and clean it up and take a look at what we've got.

Stephanie: Perfect.

Well, let's set you up.

Masters: OK. Do I get to wear one of your fancy lab coats?

Stephanie: Yes, you do.

Here we go.

Masters: Great.

Put this down here?

Stephanie: Here we go.

Masters: Let's see.

I don't think I've really put one of these on before, but-- Stephanie: Well, let me know if you need any help.

Masters: OK. Oh, and I do it just behind my back.

Stephanie: Yes, just like an apron.

Masters: Like an apron.

What are we cooking?

Stephanie: Dire wolf jaw.

Masters: Yeah.

Ha ha.

And where do I put the fossil?

Stephanie: So you're gonna put it in the tray.

Masters: OK. Stephanie: So, what will happen when you apply the solvent to the specimen is that it's going to break down the oil component that we find in the asphalt and start to liquefy it.

As you work through the preparation process, so will your solvent, as it becomes saturated.

Masters: It's a powerful chemical?

Stephanie: It is.

I would recommend you start prepping on that side.

Masters: Oh, yeah.

On these teeth here?

Stephanie: Yes.

Masters: So just gently?

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Masters: Gently brush away-- Yeah, that's really exposing that tooth like right away.

Stephanie: So, it's just like when you paint.

Now you want to clean your tool and have a go at it again.

Masters: You ever found a little rodent in the teeth of a dire wolf?

Stephanie: Yes, we have.

Masters: Oh, really?

Oh, wow!

And the plant microfossils, for instance, like the pollen, you know, has there been a lot of work done on that?

Connie: What you're gonna be finding as you prepare this dire wolf are smaller plant fragments that we, very confusingly, actually refer to in paleobotany as macrofossils, because they're plant fragments that we can actually see.

Masters: Right.

Connie: Pollen is, in terms of Botany, referred to as a microfossil.

So this is something that you wouldn't be able to see until you chemically processed it, mounted it on a slide, and are looking at it that way.

Masters: It's the invisible stuff that gets in people's noses and makes them sneeze.

Connie: It's the invisible stuff that makes you miserable in Springtime, and they're great ecological indicators for paleohistory.

There's a lot of it.

It preserves really easily, but that's work that's just starting to be done here at the Tar Pits.

Woman: It all comes down to the plants, and if we don't know what was happening with the plants, we can only really guess at why the changes were happening with the big mammals.

Connie: The curator of Botany in the 1960s, Bonnie Templeton, and other researchers that allowed us to sort of advance our picture of the Tar Pits from this sort of dry savanna to a more lush sort of landscape that you might see in central California.

And the only issue with those studies in the past is they provided so much valuable data for us and--and revealed that sort of vision of what life would have been like so much more.

But it was a static vision.

They didn't have access, the funds, or the availability of things like radiocarbon dating.

So it's just all assumed that all of these plants were growing at the same time, that this, you know, large period that the Tar Pits represents, this 55,000-year, you know, timeframe, was just sort of one picture of the Ice Age in Los Angeles.

And we know that's not true.

Stephanie: I'm gonna hand this over to my colleague Connie, and she's gonna show you all the little mysteries in that matrix.

Masters: Thank you very much.

Connie: Just over to this microscope.

Master: OK. Connie: So, yeah, feel free to take a seat there.

Masters: Yeah.

Connie: We've got a nice scoop of the matrix right there.

And what you're seeing in that little pool of light under the microscope is showing on that screen right there.

Masters: That's amazing.

Wow.

Connie: The way we sort is, we use paintbrushes.

They're really gentle.

Masters: OK. Connie: And they also--the bristles as they pass by the material, they can actually tell you, help tell you what you're looking at.

Probably noticed a lot of rocks, and this is a pretty rich can.

Masters: Look at this.

Connie: Oh, yes!

Masters: So what's that?

Connie: So, that is a beetle elytra, or a wing covering.

Masters: Elytra.

Connie: And, yeah, you can just see that the asphalt is so great at preserving the material because it just blocks oxygen and it blocks water.

And so even chitin from insects gets preserved here.

Masters: And what about this guy?

Connie: Oh, that's a lizard jaw.

Masters: A lizard jaw.

I mean, that's got to be a tiny lizard, though, right?

'Cause like, how big would that lizard have been?

Connie: That's a good question.

So we have a couple different species of lizards here-- fence lizard, alligator lizard.

So yeah, these would have been pretty, pretty small lizards.

Yeah.

There's actually a nice Juniper seed pod right above that lizard jaw.

Jessie: We can, through these very small fossils, re-create climate in the Los Angeles Basin at particular points in time.

We can see how different species are responding to known changes in climate.

So known shifts, we can see how species are responding, what species are continuing to thrive, what species aren't making it past those changes-- incredibly powerful knowledge when it comes to dealing with our currently rapidly changing world and knowing exactly how to move forward with it when it comes to the ecosystems that we currently see in California.

Masters: So where do the bones go after we've sort of cleaned and analyzed them?

Woman: All of the fossils that get prepared here in the lab get identified and they get specific individual numbers assigned to them, and they get stored in collections to be used by scientists from around the world.

Masters: I mean, how many fossils are in this room?

It seems like must be hundreds of thousands.

Woman: Definitely in the thousands.

♪ Sloth leg bones.

Masters: Wow.

Woman: Massive, yeah.

This is the ball and socket.

The giant sloths are my favorite because they're so strange.

Everything else that we find here in terms of the large mammals has something living today that is related.

So, you know, there's still elephants in the world.

There's still big cats and big dogs, but there's nothing in the world that is even kind of like a giant ground sloth.

Masters: They're big creatures.

What do they eat?

Woman: Plants.

Masters: Plants.

OK. Woman: Plants.

It always comes back to plants.

♪ Masters: So, speaking of plants, this is--this is what the ground sloths chow down on?

Jessie: We pulled a selection of some of our specimens here that kind of give us a better idea of climate.

So one of the ones that I personally wanted to sort of showcase is one of our common pine species, is Pinus muricata, or bishop pine.

And I don't know if you're-- Masters: Not very familiar with them, no, no.

Jessie: Well, it's not one that you see in the L.A. area today.

So this is a species that if it was existing here in La Brea is sort of telling us that there was something relieving that summertime drought at the time that they were growing here, which we don't quite have nowadays, right?

We--we don't get that--that heavy fog that you see in, say, San Francisco or-- Masters: We get June gloom, but it's not-- Jessie: It's a June gloom, but it's not quite the same.

It's not gonna relieve some of that summertime drought that we get in our--in our Mediterranean zone.

So this is something that actually is really interesting.

And then we have, you know, this beautiful bed of Coast Live Oak.

Master: Oh, yeah, you can see the leaves right here.

Jessie: Yeah.

Masters: That's interesting that the Coast Live Oak survived here, but, you know, the bishop pines or the Monterey Cypresses didn't.

Jessie: Yeah.

Those are the sort of important points of why.

Why is that the case?

Why did the Coast Live Oak make it?

What are the events that meant that some of these other species didn't make it through to our modern period here in the L.A. Basin?

Masters: I never thought I'd spend so much time thinking about or talking about the future while being here at the Tar Pits.

Ha!

♪ Masters, voice-over: When carefully examined, these fossils can reveal so much about subtle changes in climate.

Perhaps they even help us understand why some species, like that bishop pine Jessie just showed me, aren't around anymore.

♪ If there's another place we can see how climate affects landscape, it's the Channel Islands.

The islands are a kind of snapshot in time thanks to their isolation from the mainland.

Jessie and I set out for the island of Santa Rosa.

It's one of 4 northern islands that actually used to be one large landmass known as Santarosae.

But then the climate began to change.

The atmosphere began to warm, the ice melted, sea levels rose, and much of that superisland ended up underwater.

Masters: Hi there.

I'm Nathan.

Woman: Hey.

Man: Welcome to Santa Rosa Island.

Woman: Welcome to Santa Rosa, you guys.

Jessie: Jessie.

Woman: Hey, Jessie.

How you doing?

Man: Let me take you over here and I want to show you this special spot.

Masters: OK. Lead the way.

♪ I love these trees, yeah.

Never seen trees like this, ever.

Man: They grow sideways here, the wind blows so hard.

♪ Masters: Wow, so that's Santa Cruz Island right there.

Man: Yeah, that's the west end of Santa Cruz Island.

So it goes about 24 miles long.

Masters: I love those mountains sticking up out of the fog.

It's like we're in a different world.

Man: Yeah, it's the wind that causes that fog layer, too, blowing it.

It stacks up when it gets to the island.

♪ Masters: If we were to go back 400 or 500 generations, I mean, what would this look like?

Woman: First of all, the islands would actually be all one big island, which I think is the thing that's really unique about this-- about this landscape is that you have 4 separate islands today, but at the end of the last Ice Age, the islands actually formed one large island called Santarosae.

The islands were probably more forested.

They had a lot more pines and different kinds of trees on the island, probably more water as well.

And then seas rose when glaciers started to melt.

So when the sea started to rise and landscapes in-between the island started to get inundated underneath the water, then the islands kind of formed how you recognize them today, as the Channel Islands National Park, probably roughly about 7,000 years ago or so.

Jessie: I know that there's been fossil evidence that they've had for--for cypress, for pines, for Douglas firs.

So I just love the idea that that small section of Torrey pine there may be the landscape that the first--first peoples of the island would have kind of interacted with and--and seen.

Woman: Yeah, the earliest known evidence of human occupation on the island was actually human remains that were identified right over the ridge there on the other side of the island, and it was identified in Arlington Springs.

And so we refer to it as Arlington man, Arlington Springs man.

Yet another reason why these are amazing, amazing places.

It was identified in 1959 by an archaeologist named Phil Orr, who was associated with the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum.

It would have been, you know, again a very different landscape at that particular time period.

It would have been a little bit cooler, wetter, more water on the island.

It would have had more trees on the island at that time period for at least a couple thousand years after that, until it started to change into a little bit more kind of how it is today.

Masters: What's striking to me is that humans lived here for a couple thousand years before the sea started to inundate the land.

And what must it have been like just for these people to see their, their homeland, you know, sink beneath the seas?

Woman: Yeah, I can only imagine.

I mean, just kind of seeing these areas where, you know, you know, this is a good spot for a particular species because they're in a certain marine habitat, for instance, and then, you know, within your lifetime, you see that kind of change because it's gotten, you know, deeper and deeper and deeper into the sea, into the subtitle area.

Masters: So the land that they looked at changed, probably also their food sources changed, right?

And they adapted to astounding changes in their environment.

Woman: That's right.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's the ability to adapt for everything on the island-- I mean, humans, the plants, the marine life.

I mean, they've gone through so many changes in the past 13,000 years, and, you know, look at them.

Their beautiful island is thriving today, as are, you know, I mean, while the Chumash aren't on the islands anymore, they're still a thriving community that you have on the mainland in California today.

Masters: So is that the sort of landscape that you're trying to preserve or restore here in the National Park?

Man: Well, nothing will ever be exactly the way it was.

Times have changed, but we can try to protect those species that exist only here, that, again, only have these islands in the world to exist in, whereas the grasses we see here that were brought in for grazing, these European annuals, they're everywhere.

The native bunch grasses that exist just out here are just out here.

Masters: So, Arlington man, over there.

Woman: Yep.

Other side, yep.

Masters: That's the site over there.

What about some of the mammoth sites?

Where--where did you find-- Man: Well, there were mammoths all over Santarosae.

In fact-- Master: Probably walking right here.

Man: Probably.

I can take you over to a spot here where we can get a nice view of a place where we do know mammoths walked.

So why don't we head over there?

Masters: Totally.

Let's do it.

Man: OK. ♪ Masters, voice-over: So, how did those mammoths get here?

When sea levels were lower, it was fairly easy to make the 5-mile swim from the Ventura coast.

And wave after wave of those giant mammals probably did exactly that.

Once here though, the mammals found less and different food.

They didn't need their humongous size to fight off predators.

There weren't any.

And so they evolved into a smaller species known as the pygmy mammoth.

Jessie: Gosh.

Masters: Ha ha ha!

I know.

Windy down here.

Jessie: Yeah.

Ha ha!

I bet this dune is just sort of slowly revealing the side of this.

Masters: Well, it's probably moving, too, right?

These are always in motion?

Jessie: I think they're mostly gonna end up in my jacket.

♪ Man: I brought you down here because this spot right here is Carrington Point.

And that's a spot where in 1994, the most complete pygmy mammoth skeleton ever found on the Channel Islands was located, and it was just on the other side of the ridge line there.

Masters: "Most complete."

So like a skull and... Man: A nearly complete skeleton.

Before that and since, bits and pieces of different mammoths have been found, enough to put together an entire animal, but not from the same animal.

And so it's scientifically significant to have an individual animal.

And it was in a sandy area, kind of like, you see, a light-colored sandy spot on the low point of the hill there.

And probably one more rain storm would have washed it into the sea.

It would been lost forever.

Masters: So erosion was threatening it, but erosion is also what exposed it.

Man: Exactly.

Masters: Yeah.

Man: Exactly.

Masters: Is there any evidence of interaction between mammoths and humans here?

Woman: We haven't found any evidence of mammoth remains and cultural sites.

There has been dating of mammoth remains that is relatively close to 13,000 years, but we haven't identified any significant overlap at this time, either through dating of remains or through evidence of it within cultural sites.

But if we do think that humans were here, say 14,000, 15,000, 16,000, 17,000 years ago, then there would have been overlap between them, but we just need to find that evidence.

Masters: And it may be underwater.

Woman: It may be underwater.

That's right.

Ideally, maybe we'll find the next La Brea Tar Pits out there.

Masters: Wow.

Woman: Ha ha!

♪ Masters, voice-over: The story of the Channel Islands is all about the will to survive, to adapt to your surroundings.

But you have to wonder, what will today's climate do to fossils we haven't discovered yet?

Will a rising sea put them out of reach forever?

♪ Back on the mainland, Jessie took me to a spot near the town of Ojai... Jessie: It's down this way.

And that seems like we're clear of liquid asphalt.

I would watch where you step.

Masters: where tomorrow's history is being preserved, literally right under our feet.

♪ Masters: Um...

It's just kind of-- oh, wow.

Look.

It's like you can understand how like a very powerful mammoth could get stuck.

I mean, like, I really have to work to lift my leg out of that.

Jessie: Absolutely.

If you're--if you're not paying attention, it really doesn't take much.

And the heavier you are, the more likely you are to get stuck.

So I think actually I have the advantage here-- Masters: Right.

Jessie: operating in this terrain.

Ha ha!

It's one of a favorite examples of, you know, an active seep that's outside of the La Brea Tar Pits, but we do have them all around Southern California.

Masters: But potentially, you could find, you know, like microbes or plant fossils that would be valuable to your research?

Jessie: Yeah.

I mean, I think any time you have an asphalt seep that's naturally occurring and not the result of an old oil exploration, you have the potential of finding some sort of paleo record, right, of plants, of animals.

These asphalt seeps offer an amazing glimpse into the past for us, and any time you see a seep, there's certainly potential.

Masters: I also have to just think about the future here, like, how--'cause I'm seeing, for instance, like this Live Oak Leaf, which is already-- it's already stuck in the asphalt here.

I mean, this could be a resource to future generations understand what the environment was like today.

Jessie: Absolutely.

You're seeing our systems changing now.

We're seeing our ecosystems and our plant distributions changing, and I think the important thing to learn from any paleo record that we have is that it's not totally unusual, right?

Our planet is dynamic.

Things have been changing as long as we can see back in time, and it's the tools that we can gain from--from looking back in time, using these--these archives to see how things were responding into what, into why, and when, and did they bounce back, or did they cease to exist in certain areas that give us really important tools for addressing the changes you mentioned in the future.

Masters: These places, they're always sort of framed as being about the past, but in some ways, they're about the world we're living in and the world we'll live in tomorrow.

Jessie: Absolutely.

Masters: Yeah, yeah.

Masters, voice-over: If there's one constant here, it's that everything changes.

When we study what came before us, it helps us understand how change is always happening and the role we play.

It's a humbling thought.

All those little bits of yesterday that we dig up, dust off, and carefully examine, they give us clues not only about yesterday, but about tomorrow and how we'll have to adapt to a changing world.

♪ Announcer: This episode of "Lost LA" was made possible in part by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation, a Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropy, and the Frieda Berlinski Foundation.