Description

La Brea Tar Pit Beetles

Species: Tropisternus sp. (Water Beetles)

Age: Pleistocene Epoch, 50,000 – 11,000 years old

Location: Los Angeles, California, USA

Formation of Origin: The World-Famous La Brea Tar Pits

Tropisternus beetles, like many animals from this time period, are still around to this day, known for being some of the first forms of complex life to migrate to new sources of water like springs or ponds. They are an important building block layer for any ecosystem, providing food for a variety of other creatures like birds, lizards, and small mammals. And unfortunately, their instinct to find water and land on it also caused their demise as they became trapped in the sticky tar, mistaking its shimmering surface for water. These death pools were capable of trapping Sabertooth tigers and Columbian mammoths, so insects hardly had any hope of escape once they were stuck. Additionally, once these beetles were trapped, they became bait for unsuspecting birds hoping for an easy meal, as evidenced by the bird bones encased alongside this fossil.

Fossil material from La Brea itself is extraordinarily hard to come by. While tar fossils from McKittrick and other nearby pits sometimes appear, La Brea usually remains elusive. These specimens come from an old collection from the early 1970’s when a gentleman purchased bulk tar from the museum, which was deemed unimportant due to a lack of megafauna remains. However, while they’re no Smilodon, these beetles are a fantastic piece of prehistory from a world-famous site. This is an incredible and very rare opportunity to add a piece of La Brea tar to your collection.