Now available in a paperback edition on Amazon
My bookTRAPPED IN TAR: Fossils From the Ice Age is now available as a paperback book on Amazon. It was originally published by Clarion Books in 1987 with black and white photos by Richard Hewett. In this new version, the text has been updated and is now illustrated with full color photos by Arthur and Caroline Arnold. I am happy to have TRAPPED IN TAR: Fossils From the Ice Age in print again and available to new readers. In the original version my children, Jennifer and Matt, were some of the models. They have now grown up and have children of their own. In the new book, my grandchildren, Alessandra, Lucas and Paige, are in some of the photos, taken on family trips to the tar pits and the George C. Page Museum. I am grateful for their cheerful cooperation! I also thank my son Matt and son-in-law Humberto for their photo contributions.
Arnold family and Columbian Mammoth at the George C. Page Museum
TRAPPED IN TAR: Fossils From the Ice Age is also available on Amazon as an e-book. You can read it with a Kindle app on various devices (I use my iPad) or on your computer.Between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago, imperial mammoths, giant ground sloths, and sabertooth cats roamed across the continent of North America. Like the dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago, these Ice Age creatures are extinct today. Only their fossil bones remain.
During the Ice Age, over 400 different kinds of animals lived on the grassy plain that is now Los Angeles. Then, as now, pools of tar sometimes seeped to the surface of the earth. Unwary animals stepped into the sticky tar and were trapped. There they died. Gradually their bones sank to the bottom of the tar seep. In time, the tar penetrated the bones and preserved them.
This book tells the story of the Rancho La Brea fossils and examines the work of the paleontologists who excavate and study them at the George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries in Los Angeles, California.
