THE RANCHO LA BREA COLLECTION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA MUSEUM OF PALEONTOLOGY, A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Among the most noted Pleistocene vertebrate localities in the world, Rancho La Brea’s history extends back over one hundred years. While the Page Museum’s collection garners the most attention, the University of California Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley (UCMP) has the second largest Rancho La Brea collection, numbering several hundred thousand specimens. Supervised by Professor John C. Merriam, the University of California at Berkeley undertook excavations at Rancho La Brea on five occasions, conducting short field seasons cumulating a month or two annually from 1906 to 1908, followed by excavation throughout most of 1909 and a period of large-scale collecting from September 1912 through March 1913. Most material from the 1906 to 1909 excavations came from locality 1059, which was subsequently renumbered locality 2051 during the 1912 field season. The 1912 to 1913 excavations produced an estimated 300,000 bones from localities 2050, 2051 and 2052. Merriam’s goals at Rancho La Brea were to collect sufficient material for taxonomic research, to mount composite skeletons of common taxa, and provide ample “duplicate” specimens for trade with other institutions. Exchange of Rancho La Brea specimens with museums worldwide permitted Berkeley to significantly enhance its vertebrate collections in the 1910s and 1920s. Although Merriam sought to oversee all excavations at Rancho La Brea, Berkeley’s involvement at the site ended when landowner Allan Hancock granted Los Angeles County and its new Museum of History, Science and Art the exclusive rights to excavate at Rancho La Brea for two years from mid 1913 through 1915, after which Hancock donated the 23-acre excavation site (Hancock Park) to Los Angeles County in 1916. While Berkeley’s collection played a significant role in published taxonomic research in the early years following excavation, the collection was little used for decades to follow, although recent years have seen an increase in research activity with the development of new technologies for analysis (e.g. stable isotopes, 3-D morphometrics). Since 1914, as specimens were prepared, the Rancho La Brea collection has been housed in the Campanile (Sather Tower) on the Berkeley campus, awaiting study by researchers.