Mel holds up Lucy (or “little mel” as garrett calls her)
Chuck the bearded dragon
Snowflake the corn snake
I forgot the tree frogs' names!
The lovely UCLA campus (medical buildings). These blue flowers were everywhere
Looking South on Westwood
Bruin, the UCLA mascot
Royce Hall, where the big plenary sessions (including the talk by Nobel laureate Marty Chalfie) happened. He used Green Fluorescent Protein as a way to look “inside” biological organisms.
View from my room in the residential halls
This took me by surprise till I realized it was a movie promotion
Wilshire Blvd, on which the La Brea tar pits are
Appropriately enough, tar has been used to seal a repair in the sidewalk
Mammoth getting trapped in a tar pit!
Still bubbling away with methane and hydrogen sulfide
Beautiful tree at tar pit entrance
Harlan's ground sloth
You get to pull up a rod to see how hard it is to get out of tar. It just sucks you in.
A cool display showing how plant fragments trapped in teeth (small white triangle) provide insights into diets
It's a saber toothed cat, not tiger, by the way
Cool!
Most of the bones are incredibly well preserved, thanks to the tar, so paleontologists can even tell what diseases or injuries the animals had
In the whole place, there's only one display for invertebrates. Sigh - homo sapiens is optimized for looking at and thinking about things on a human scale.
A mammoth and her baby that were both trapped in the same pit at the same time.
:-)
The museum had a couple of animatronic creatures - neither very good.
A columbian mammoth - the largest fossil found in La Brea - up to 13 ft high.
Took these for Mark
Cheeze!
lol.
Some bird displays
Only 400 of the 1600+ Dire Wolf skulls found at the site.
The museum has a beautiful central courtyard
American Lion
The “fishbowl” is a glass walled lab where the specimens are actually cleaned and visitors can watch the paleontologists in action. Very cool.
Zed is the big mammoth specimen in the middle of the room.
Zed's femur
Paleontologists clearly have a sense of humour (and style)
Rich delicious taste!
Oil wells at the turn of the century at Rancho La Brea
I still find it hard to get over the fact that this incredible fossil site is in the heart of a megapolis!
More pits visible in the grounds
A very odd but colourful display of children's toys tied to a wire fence
Close up of a pit
Clearly an iconic coffee shop, because the sign in the window says...
Great ad for public transport
The Farmer's Market. Nice place to sit. But tourist-trap prices.
Shop called “Light my fire” that sells only chilli sauces
Hollywood Boulevard!
Stars!
Marilyn Monroe and Elvis look on as a dad pulls his child along in a cart!
Pirates of southern california
Yoda is WAY too tall
In front of Sid Grauman's chinese theatre - where all the stars dedicated palm prints to him
Lining up to pay tributes to MJ
It was packed!
Historic hollywood apartments
Only in Hollywood...
Batman and the joker sign autographs together
Snoopy
The roosevelt hotel where the first academy awards were held in 1929
Cashing in on MJ's death
Every third building is a coaching institute for Hollywood
