Surrounded by a gooey graveyard of prehistoric beasts, a small crew diligently wades through a backlog of fossil finds from a century of excavation at the La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of Los Angeles.
Digs over the years have unearthed bones of mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and other unsuspecting Ice Age creatures that became trapped in ponds of sticky asphalt.
But it's the smaller discoveries - plants, insects and rodents - in recent years that are shaping scientists' views of life in the region 11,000 to 50,000 years ago.
"Earlier excavations really missed a great part of the story," said John Harris, chief curator at the George C Page Museum, which oversees the fossil collection. People "were only taking out bones they could see, but it's the hidden bones that provide clues to the environment."
The museum on Monday celebrates 100 years of digging, which has recovered some 5.5 million bones representing more than 600 species of animals and plants, the richest cache of Ice Age fossils.
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There is so much left to do that it could easily take another century to complete.
