The famed La Brea Tar Pits excavation site is getting a makeover. See the first concepts

La Brea Tar Pits is an Ice Age fossil site that's being actively excavated in the middle of Los Angeles. (Photo: Courtesy Of La Brea Tar Pits)

LOS ANGELES — Three architect-led teams have unveiled conceptual approaches for reimagining the famed La Brea Tar Pits, an active Ice Age excavation site in the middle of Los Angeles.

The designs revealed Monday night will be reviewed by experts from a range of disciplines and public input will be considered before the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County chooses one firm by year’s end.

More than 400,000 people visit the Tar Pits annually, which have yielded millions of fossils, including saber-toothed cats, dire wolf and mastodon skeletons, as well as samples of plants, small animals and insects that give insight into 50,000 years of history.

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But it’s been more than 40 years since the Tar Pits’ George C. Page Museum was built, and officials determined it’s necessary to improve the visitor experience.

The Lake Pit, located in front of the museum, is not actually filled with tar but is a pit left over from asphalt mining operations in the late 1800s. According to the La Brea Tar Pits website, the lake’s bubbles and distinctive odor come from a deep underground oil field.

Additional renderings can be seen here. 

This rendering of what the La Brea Tar Pits could look like from Dorte Mandrup A/S shows visitors passing through an open foyer, where they would see activities in the building – below, and above. The collection of creatures would be presented in excavations, laboratories and exhibit spaces. (Photo: Dorte Mandrup A/S rendering)

This rendering of what the La Brea Tar Pits could look like from Weiss/Manfredi shows a proposed pedestrian path connecting the existing elements of the site, enhancing amenities for community engagement and research and revealing the museum collection. (Photo: Weiss/Manfredi rendering)

This rendering of what the La Brea Tar Pits could look like from DS+R shows a publicly accessible dig site supported by a mobile “Dig Rig,” designed to anticipate current and future digs in the park. (Photo: DS+R rendering)

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