La Brea Tar Pits close for two-year renovation

The La Brea Tar Pits will close its doors on July 6 for a major renovation, with plans to reopen in summer 2028 as the centerpiece of the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research. Over 3.5 million fossils—each packed and catalogued for two years—will b

On July 6, the lights go out at the La Brea Tar Pits—at least for visitors. Inside, the museum’s back rooms are already in full motion, packed with labeled fossils and the careful work of preparing irreplaceable bones for a move that could take years.

Every bone, down to the last dire wolf rib, must be sheathed in a custom foam shell. Sloth jaws and sabertooth fangs are swaddled, catalogued and crated for the next two years. Outside the crates. workers in the fossil labs keep going—cleaning. restoring. and organizing what the Tar Pits have collected from the sticky ground for decades.

When the Hancock Park museum reopens in summer 2028. it will be the centerpiece of the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research. a scientific hub focused on an era of natural history preserved at the La Brea Tar Pits better than anywhere else on Earth. The renovation will largely keep the museum within the footprint of the current building. reshaping how the collection is presented and how the preserved ecosystem can help explain what is happening to the world’s current one.

For the museum and its staff, the stakes are both scientific and logistical. The Tar Pits are home to 3.5 million fossils—fragile, irreplaceable, and impossible to replace. Moving the museum to another part of Los Angeles is “out of the question. ” staff said. because the location is tied to geology that began long before the museum existed.

Nature chose this spot about 60. 000 years ago. when crude petroleum seeping to the surface eventually formed the tar that would trap life. Over the following 49. 000 years. the sticky pits captured virtually everything that fell or walked into them—grains of pollen carried by the wind. ancient camels. Columbian mammoths. and much more. The result is a near-complete record of virtually everything that lived in the Los Angeles area in the late Pleistocene.

“It’s an era of natural history with striking parallels to our own—climate change. extinction. devastating fires. a wobbling balance between humans and the rest of the natural world. ” said Regan Dunn. a paleobotanist and curator at the La Brea Tar Pits. Dunn called the collection unmatched anywhere else: “No city anywhere has anything that’s comparable. You have this trap. basically. that was just sitting here and collecting all of Los Angeles life for the last 60. 000 years.”.

The museum has used the collection for research that links environmental collapse and human arrival. In 2023. Dunn and fellow curator Emily Lindsey drew on the Tar Pits’ record for a study documenting how the collapse of biodiversity in the Ice Age coincided with the arrival of humans and the fires they struggled to contain.

Lori Bettison-Varga, president of the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, said the story matters far beyond Los Angeles. “The story [at the Tar Pits] is critical to our understanding not just of Los Angeles. but of what’s happening in the world. ” she said. “The story of extinction and resilience related to climate and ecological change … is just so relevant.”.

At the moment. staff say the museum is not set up to tell visitors that story as clearly as it could. Some misconceptions linger in the exhibits. The iconic outdoor Lake Pit includes a half-submerged mammoth sculpture that gives many people the wrong impression that the tar worked like quicksand. In reality. staff said. only a few inches of the sticky stuff were enough to snare a heavy animal and keep it pinned until it either died of exposure or fell prey to predators—who. in turn. became trapped themselves.

Even small details have to be rethought. Exhibits covering bugs and plants are currently limited to two small wall displays last updated in the 1980s. The saber-toothed cat that appears through a window uses Pepper’s Ghost—an optical illusion that doesn’t reflect modern knowledge of the animal’s anatomy. Dunn said the illusion likely won’t be part of the remodeled museum because it occupies too much space.

Early in planning, the museum surveyed local community members and museumgoers about which elements should carry over. The grassy hills around the building—steep enough for children to roll down like logs—were kept. So were the tar pulls, an interactive exhibit where visitors test their strength against levers submerged in buckets of asphalt.

The outdoor mammoth family sculptures also will remain. Bettison-Varga said the landscaping will be altered to make the scene more scientifically accurate.

Inside, the new layout is intended to make better use of space for exhibits, storage, research and educational programs. Bettison-Varga said the leafy inner courtyard’s lush greenery will be replaced with plants more closely related to the late Pleistocene. such as cypress and toyon. All of the current mounted Ice Age mammal skeletons will return. and four new ones will be added: a baby bison. a baby dire wolf. a giant ground sloth constructed of real fossils (the one currently on display is a plaster cast). and Zed.

Zed—the most complete Columbian mammoth ever found—has been undergoing conservation at the museum for nearly 20 years. In the remodeled museum, he will be displayed as he likely died—in combat with another male.

During the renovation, excavations at the active pits and conservation of fossils will continue, just under different working conditions. A corps of volunteers and employees is already working nonstop to pack up the collections. Dunn said the fossils will be relocated to other NHM properties during the closure.

For the people who spend their days preparing fossils—and the children who crowd around the labs—the interruption will be personal. On a recent afternoon, volunteers wheeled carts around the museum with jaws and vertebrae carefully organized by species. Visitors leaned in close to the Fish Bowl, the glass-walled lab where white-coated preparators clean fossils.

While much of that experience is built around constant viewing. the museum is working on mobile programming as an alternative for about 34. 000 schoolchildren who visit each year on field trips. Virtually all of them spend part of their visit pressed against the glass of the Fish Bowl watching scientists at work. Dunn said some children ask questions scribbled on pieces of paper or typed on phones against the glass. and preparators answer with notes of their own. An expanded Fish Bowl-type lab is also planned for the new design.

Still, the closure will change what the work feels like. “It’s going to be weird cleaning fossils without anybody watching,” volunteer preparators said. Senior Preparator Laura Tewksbury put it more plainly: “There are a lot of kids. neighborhood kids. that I get to see as they grow up. It’s a lot of fun.”.

Between the closing date and the planned reopening in summer 2028. the museum’s attention will shift from the public-facing story to the slow. meticulous task of packing a world made of bone—one that has been collected for roughly 60. 000 years by the tar itself. and now must be carefully carried forward. crate by crate. until the doors open again.

La Brea Tar Pits renovation Hancock Park Ice Age research Samuel Oschin Global Center 3.5 million fossils Zed mammoth Fish Bowl lab Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County