Working at the subterranean site of the future Martin Luther King Jr. Crenshaw Line station in Leimert Park, Metro environmental monitors have discovered an enormous bone that once belonged to a prehistoric bison. According to The Source, the monitors carefully excavated the bone from 70 feet below ground and sent it to the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits for analysis, where experts estimated that the bone is between 10,000 and 18,000 years old.
The diverse array of fossils speaks to the tumultuous history of Southern California's climate. Marine fossils found at the site of the future Wilshire/Fairfax station show that hundreds of thousands of years ago, Los Angeles was probably a pretty cold and wet place. However, during the Pleistocene era, when ancient bison roamed Leimert Park, the area likely had a savanna woodland habitat. The bone was found in alluvial soil, meaning there was probably a river there once.
The bone discovered in Leimert Park has been stored in a lab, but will eventually be donated to the Natural History Museum.