Link: Life in a tar pit .
In addition to some rather trendy shops, the La Brea area of Los Angeles is home to the impressive tar pits. For at least the last 40 millennia, heavy oil has mixed with soil and seeped up as asphalt. From time to time, animals large and small have become trapped in this very sticky tar, drowned, and been fossilized, offering scientists glimpses of the native fauna stretching back to the Pleistocene.
But scientists are discovering more than just saber-toothed tiger bones in the tar pits. A pair of researchers from UC Riverside have conducted a survey of the asphalt and have discovered novel petroleum-degrading bacteria living in the oil. The bacteria are specialized for their environment, which contains very little water, no oxygen, and lots of chemicals that most other lifeforms would find highly toxic.
