Imagining Ice Age L.A.

The Columbian mammoth sculptures installed at the Lake Pit in 1968 reflect sculptor Howard Ball’s interpretation, but later fossil studies and research at the Tar Pits Museum have changed understanding of how these mammoths lived and died. Ball towed the male mammoth sculpture from his studio to the site with his VW Bug. The sculptures portray a mammoth family of a standing male, a baby, and a female becoming trapped after wandering knee-deep into a lake to drink, with sticky tar hidden by several feet of water holding her fast as she trumpets in terror and the male stands helplessly on the shore. Scientific evidence from La Brea indicates instead that Columbian mammoths lived in female-led herds, with adult males usually living apart except during mating season, as Asian elephants do today, and that mammoths did not need to enter tar-filled lakes to become stuck because only a few inches of goo could trap them. Most Columbian mammoths trapped at La Brea were males rather than females, and some scientists think this was because males typically lived alone and had no companions to pull them free.

Los Angeles, California · United States