The Only Human In The La Brea Tar Pits

03/14/22 • 16 min

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While the famous La Brea Tar Pits are well-known for charismatic Ice Age megafauna, like sabertooth cats and dire wolves, a lesser-known discovery from the Pits is the partial skeleton of a human woman. In this episode, we walk through what the Tar Pits can tell us about the ecosystem of Los Angeles over the last 50,000 years and why La Brea Woman remains such a mystery.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

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Introducing Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time

Dig into the past and explore the greatest mysteries of natural history with the team behind the hit YouTube series PBS Eons. From the dawn of the dinosaurs to downtown Los Angeles, we’re covering what we know — and what we still don’t know — about the history of life on Earth.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.
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The Case of the Most Famous Fake Human Fossil

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This episode is a mystery in the most classic literary sense of the word. It’s a whodunit detective story that spans more than a century - the saga of the Piltdown Man Hoax. From a gravel pit in Sussex, we follow the faked fossils through history, to what’s now the Natural History Museum in London, where scientists are using new technologies to try to unravel the identity of the fraudster, and explore how this hoax impacted the study of human origins.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.