On the lookout for Smilodon fatalis

Much of the public discussion surrounding an upcoming expansion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s mid-Wilshire campus has been about money. So far, not much has been said about fossils.

In March, the museum announced it had raised $156 million, enough for a first phase of construction -- a turning point for LACMA, which had to abandon an earlier, more sweeping plan as too expensive. But now, as the campus readies for new construction, the issue is pre-history: The 23-acre Hancock Park property, which includes LACMA and the county-owned Page Museum at La Brea Tar Pits, contains one of the richest Ice Age fossil sites in North America.

In 1986, construction of LACMA’s Japanese pavilion was shut down for six weeks when excavation uncovered a large deposit of vertebrate fossils, says John Harris, longtime chief curator of the Page Museum. Also, he adds, “they ran into the dump from the old Hancock House ... so there were some early 20th century artifacts and license plates, a fragment of a milk cooler, some bottles of various sorts.”

Naturally, Harris and his Page Museum colleagues were more interested in the fossils, which included what Harris refers to as “the usual suspects” -- dire wolves, camels and saber-toothed cats (Smilodon fatalis), plus horses and bison and sloths, oh my. And that’s what the Page is watching for now.

“They are relocating the storm drain, they are going down 20 feet or so below the surface, so they are almost certainly going to go into undisturbed ground,” Harris says. “We don’t know what they are likely to find, except chances are they are going to find something. You may run into one or two isolated bones, or you may run into a very concentrated patch of bones.”

In 1986, archeological aspects of the excavation were overseen by the Page Museum. This time around, LACMA has engaged ArcheoPaleo Resource Management Inc. to monitor any fossil or cultural discoveries.

LACMA President Melody Kanschat said in a prepared statement that the management company will “establish protocol for stopping the excavation to remove, clean and store any fossils that are encountered.”

Because Hancock Park is owned by the county, any significant finds will become property of the Page Museum.

-- Diane Haithman