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Only Two of these \"Frist Settlers"

THE Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art at Exposition
In Park is a large, unique mural painting by Charles R. Knight, graph-
ically restoring a scene thousands of years before the Pacific dawn.
The skillful artist, as a background for the parade of the skeletons which
comprise the finest Pleistocene collection in the world, has pictured the ani-
mals as they were in relentless struggle for survivorship.
The gummy asphaltum pits of La Brea Rancho have been nature's treasure
trove from which science has wrested the faunal secrets of the Glacial period
which ended something less than 25,000 years ago after its hold of 2,000 to
5,000 centuries. Thirty separate deposits in the La Brea pits on Wilshire
boulevard have yielded fossils to the amazing total of 5,000 individual animals,
including mastodons, giant ground sloths, saber-tooth tigers, primitive oxen,
bisons, the great and numerous wolf, camels, lions, bears, horses, coyotes and
foxes.
Of all these rovers of this area in the Pleistocene age, the California gray
fox alone was adaptable enough to survive. And in the air the giant birds
were reduced to the California condor which only now is nearing extinction
because of failure to adapt claws that can catch live food.
The first fossils, it is learned from the excellent reports prepared for the
museum by L. E. Wyman, were uncovered at shallow depths fifty years ago
by workmen digging out asphaltum for commercial purposes. It was little
realized at that time what a priceless collection awaited in the preserving
strata below.
Scientific exploration of the field began in 1906 when Dr. J. C. Merriam
of the University of California made important discoveries that attracted
other scientists and institutions. The searching activities were restricted in
1913 to Los Angeles County for a period of two years to obtain a wide range
of specimens for the museum. In 1924 G. Allan Hancock, owner of La Brea
lands, donated twenty-five acres to the county for park purposes.
It is charcteristic that the fossils have been found in groups, ten of the
thirty deposits yielding the greater part. For instance, nearly all of the ele-