University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U. S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-system public higher education plan, which includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges System; the University of California was founded on March 23, 1868, operated temporarily in Oakland before moving to its new campus in Berkeley in 1873. In March 1951, the University of California began to reorganize itself into something distinct from its first campus at Berkeley, with Robert Gordon Sproul remaining in place as the first systemwide President and Clark Kerr becoming the first Chancellor of UC Berkeley. However, the 1951 reorganization was stalled by resistance from Sproul and his allies, it was not until Kerr succeeded Sproul as President that UC was able to evolve into a true university system from 1957 to 1960. In the 21st century, the University of California has 10 campuses, a combined student body of 251,700 students, 21,200 faculty members, 144,000 staff members and over 1.86 million living alumni, as governed by a semi-autonomous Board of Regents.
Its tenth and newest campus in Merced opened in fall 2005. Nine campuses enroll graduate students. In addition, the UC Hastings College of Law, located in San Francisco, is affiliated with UC, but other than sharing its name is autonomous from the rest of the system; the University of California manages or co-manages three national laboratories for the U. S. Department of Energy: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Collectively, the colleges and alumni of the University of California make it the most comprehensive and advanced postsecondary educational system in the world, responsible for nearly $50 billion per year of economic impact. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers having won at least 62 Nobel Prizes as of 2017. In 1849, the state of California ratified its first constitution, which contained the express objective of creating a complete educational system including a state university.
Taking advantage of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, the California Legislature established an Agricultural and Mechanical Arts College in 1866. However, it existed only as a placeholder to secure federal land-grant funds. Meanwhile, Congregational minister Henry Durant, an alumnus of Yale, had established the private Contra Costa Academy, on June 20, 1853, in Oakland, California; the initial site was bounded by Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets and Harrison and Franklin Streets in downtown Oakland. In turn, the Academy's trustees were granted a charter in 1855 for a College of California, though the College continued to operate as a college preparatory school until it added college-level courses in 1860; the College's trustees and supporters believed in the importance of a liberal arts education, but ran into a lack of interest in liberal arts colleges on the American frontier. In November 1857, the College's trustees began to acquire various parcels of land facing the Golden Gate in what is now Berkeley for a future planned campus outside of Oakland.
But first, they needed to secure the College's water rights by buying a large farm to the east. In 1864, they organized the College Homestead Association, which borrowed $35,000 to purchase the land, plus another $33,000 to purchase 160 acres of land to the south of the future campus; the Association subdivided the latter parcel and started selling lots with the hope it could raise enough money to repay its lenders and create a new college town. But sales of new homesteads fell short. Governor Frederick Low favored the establishment of a state university based upon the University of Michigan plan, thus in one sense may be regarded as the founder of the University of California. At the College of California's 1867 commencement exercises, where Low was present, Benjamin Silliman, Jr. criticized Californians for creating a state polytechnic school instead of a real university. That same day, Low first suggested a merger of the already-functional College of California with the nonfunctional state college, went on to participate in the ensuing negotiations.
On October 9, 1867, the College's trustees reluctantly agreed to join forces with the state college to their mutual advantage, but under one condition—that there not be an "Agricultural and Mechanical Arts College", but a complete university, within which the assets of the College of California would be used to create a College of Letters. Accordingly, the Organic Act, establishing the University of California, was introduced as a bill by Assemblyman John W. Dwinelle on March 5, 1868, after it was duly passed by both houses of the state legislature, it was signed into state law by Governor Henry H. Haight on March 23, 1868. However, as constituted, the new University was not an actual merger of the two colleges, but was an new institution which inherited certain objectives and assets from each of them; the University
Saber-toothed cat
A saber-toothed cat is any member of various extinct groups of predatory mammals that were characterized by long, curved saber-shaped canine teeth. The large maxillary canine teeth extended from the mouth when it was closed; the saber-toothed cats were found worldwide from the Eocene epoch to the end of the Pleistocene epoch, existing for about 42 million years. One of the best-known genera is Smilodon, species of which S. fatalis, are popularly, but incorrectly referred as a "saber-toothed tiger," a genus within the subfamily Machairodontinae of the carnivoran family Felidae. Extant members of Felidae include cats of the subfamilies Pantherinae. However, usage of the word cat is in some cases a misnomer, as many species referred to as saber-toothed "cats" are not related to modern cats of Felidae: instead, many are members of other feliform carnivoran families, such as Barbourofelidae and Nimravidae. In this regard, saber-toothed cats can be viewed as examples of convergent evolution; this convergence is remarkable due not only to the development of elongated canines, but a suite of other characteristics, such as a wide gape and bulky forelimbs, so consistent that it has been termed the "saber-tooth suite."Of the feliform lineages, the family Nimravidae is the oldest, entering the landscape around 42 mya and becoming extinct by 7.2 mya.
Barbourofelidae were extinct by 9 mya. These two would have shared some habitats; the different groups of saber-toothed cats evolved their saber-toothed characteristics independently. They are most known for having maxillary canines which extended down from the mouth when the mouth was closed. Saber-toothed cats were more robust than today's cats and were quite bear-like in build, they were believed to be excellent hunters and hunted animals such as sloths and other large prey. Evidence from the numbers found at La Brea Tar Pits suggests that Smilodon, like modern lions, was a social carnivore; the first saber-tooths to appear were non-mammalian synapsids, such as the gorgonopsids. Some had two pairs of upper canines with two jutting down from each side, but most had one pair of upper extreme canines; because of their primitiveness, they are easy to tell from machairodonts. Several defining characteristics are a lack of a coronoid process, many sharp "premolars" more akin to pegs than scissors, long skulls.
The second appearance is in a lineage of Cretaceous metatherians. At least one genus, possessed long canines, given both the predatory habits of the clade as well as the incomplete material, this may have been a more widespread adaptation; the third appearance of long canines is Thylacosmilus, the most distinctive of the saber-tooth mammals and is easy to tell apart. It differs from machairodonts in possessing a prominent flange and a tooth, triangular in cross section; the root of the canines is more prominent than in machairodonts and a true sagittal crest is absent. The fourth instance of saber-teeth is from the clade Oxyaenidae; the small and slender Machaeroides bore canines. Its muzzle was narrower; the fifth saber-tooth appearance is the ancient family of the nimravids. Both groups have short skulls with tall sagittal crests, their general skull shape is similar; some have distinctive flanges, some have none at all, so this confuses the matter further. Machairodonts were always bigger and their canines were longer and more stout for the most part, but exceptions do appear.
The sixth appearance is the barbourofelids. These carnivores are closely related to actual cats; the best-known barbourofelid is Barbourofelis, which differs from most machairodonts by having a much heavier and more stout mandible, smaller orbits and knobby flanges, canines that are farther back. The average machairodont had well-developed incisors; the seventh and last of the saber-tooth group to evolve were the machairodonts themselves. Many of the saber-toothed cats' food sources were large mammals such as elephants and other colossal herbivores of the era; the evolution of enlarged canines in Tertiary carnivores was a result of large mammals being the source of prey for saber-toothed cats. The development of the saber-toothed condition appears to represent a shift in function and killing behavior, rather than one in predator-prey relations. Many hypotheses exist concerning saber-tooth killing methods, some of which include attacking soft tissue such as the belly and throat, where biting deep was essential to generate killing blows.
The elongated teeth aided with strikes reaching major blood vessels in these large mammals. However, the precise functional advantage of the saber-toothed cat's bite in relation to prey size, is a mystery. A new point-to-point bite model is introduced in the article by Andersson et al. showing that for saber-tooth cats, the depth of the killing bite decreases with increasing prey size. The extended gape of saber-toothed cats results in a considerable increase in bite depth when biting into prey with a radius of less than 10 cm. For the saber-tooth, this size-rev
Salt Lake Oil Field
The Salt Lake Oil Field is an oil field underneath the city of Los Angeles, California. Discovered in 1902, developed in the following years, the Salt Lake field was once the most productive in California; as of 2009, the only operator on the field was Plains Production. The field is notable as being the source, by long-term seepage of crude oil to the ground surface along the 6th Street Fault, of the famous La Brea Tar Pits; the adjacent and geologically related South Salt Lake Oil Field, not discovered until 1970, is still productive from an urban drillsite it shares with the nearby Beverly Hills Oil Field run by Plains Exploration and Production. The field is one of many in the Los Angeles Basin. To the west is the San Vicente Oil Field, to the southwest the large Beverly Hills Oil Field. To the east are the Los Angeles City Oil Field and Los Angeles Downtown Oil Fields, the former one of the earliest to be drilled in the basin, the one responsible along with the Salt Lake Field for the early twentieth-century oil boom in the area.
Abutting the field to the southwest is the discovered and still active South Salt Lake Oil Field. The land above the two oil fields has a mean elevation of 200 feet above sea level, slopes towards the south-southwest, away from the Santa Monica Mountains, draining via Ballona Creek towards Santa Monica Bay in the Pacific Ocean; the productive region of the field is three miles long by one mile across, with the long axis west to east along and parallel to Beverly Boulevard, from near its intersection with La Cienega Boulevard to past its intersection with Highland Avenue. All of the area is within the city of Los Angeles, is urbanized, making the Salt Lake Field one of a few active oil fields in the United States in an urban setting. While the entire former field area is dotted with abandoned wells, now overbuilt with dense residential and commercial development, all active drilling takes place from a shielded, soundproofed drilling island adjacent to the Beverly Center, east of San Vicente Boulevard between Beverly Blvd. and 3rd Street.
Since normal vertical drilling is impractical in a dense urban environment – active oil wells are loud and make poor neighbors – drilling from the clustered wells in the island is directional, with wells slanting into different parts of the formation, similar to the technique used for drilling offshore fields from oil platforms. Only eleven wells, all in this drilling enclosure, remain active of the more than 450 once scattered over the landscape now known as Midtown Los Angeles. Other wells within the enclosure produce from the adjacent San Beverly Hills fields; the adjacent South Salt Lake Oil Field is much smaller than its northern neighbor. Discovered in 1970, only about a mile long by a thousand feet across, this field is exploited from an urban drillsite at Genesee Avenue and Pico Boulevard within the bounds of the Beverly Hills Oil Field; the only active operator is Plains Exploration and Production. The field is near the northern edge of the Los Angeles Basin, about two miles south of the Hollywood Hills, the nearest portion of the Santa Monica Mountains.
The Santa Monica Fault, not known to be active, demarcates the boundary between the basin and the mountains. Several other faults cut including the 3rd Street Fault and the 6th Street Fault. A layer of sediments of Quaternary age, both alluvial and shallow marine, forms a cap of 200-foot thickness on the underlying formations, several of which are oil-bearing. First is the Upper Pliocene Pico Formation, not petroleum-bearing in the Salt Lake field. Underneath the Pico are the late Pliocene Repetto and Puente Formations; the Repetto Formation is a sandstone and conglomerate unit deposited in a submarine fan environment, is a prolific petroleum reservoir throughout the Los Angeles Basin. Underneath the Repetto is the late Miocene Puente Formation. All of these rock units are faulted and folded, forming structural traps, with oil trapped in anticlinal folds and along fault blocks. A total of six producing horizons, lettered A through F from top to bottom, have been identified in the Salt Lake field.
Only Pool "A", first to be discovered, is in the Repetto, having an average depth of only about 1,000 feet below ground surface. Pools "B" and "C" were found by 1904, the deeper pools "D", "E", "F", ranging from 2,850 to 3,300 feet bgs, were found in 1960 with the resumption of drilling from the Gilmore Drilling Island. Oil from the field is heavy and sulfurous, with API gravity ranging from 9 to 22, but 14-18. In the South Salt Lake field, two pools have been identified, both in 1970: the Clifton Sands and the Dunsmuir Sands, at 1,000 feet and 2,500 feet depth respectively. Oil is found in several steeply dipping sand units bounded by impermeable rocks; the oil in this field is less heavy than in the main Salt Lake field, with API gravity ranging from 22 to 26. Sulfur content was not repo
Micropaleontology
Micropaleontology is the branch of paleontology that studies microfossils, or fossils that require the use of a microscope to see the organism, its morphology and its characteristic details. Microfossils are fossils that are between 0.001mm and 1 mm in size, the study of which requires the use of light or electron microscopy. Fossils which can be studied with the naked eye or low-powered magnification, such as a hand lens, are referred to as macrofossils. For example, some colonial organisms, such as Bryozoa have large colonies, but are classified by fine skeletal details of the small individuals of the colony. In another example, many fossil genera of Foraminifera, which are protists are known from shells that were as big as coins, such as the genus Nummulites. Microfossils are a common feature of the geological record, from the Precambrian to the Holocene, they are most common in deposits of marine environments, but occur in brackish water, fresh water and terrestrial sedimentary deposits.
While every kingdom of life is represented in the microfossil record, the most abundant forms are protist skeletons or cysts from the Chrysophyta, Sarcodina and chitinozoans, together with pollen and spores from the vascular plants. In 2017, fossilized microorganisms, or microfossils, were announced to have been discovered in hydrothermal vent precipitates in the Nuvvuagittuq Belt of Quebec, Canada that may be as old as 4.28 billion years old, the oldest record of life on Earth, suggesting "an instantaneous emergence of life", after ocean formation 4.41 billion years ago, not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago. Nonetheless, life may have started earlier, at nearly 4.5 billion years ago, as claimed by some researchers. Micropaleontology can be divided into four areas of study on the basis of microfossil composition: calcareous, as in coccoliths and foraminifera, phosphatic, as in the study of some vertebrates, siliceous, as in diatoms and radiolaria, or organic, as in the pollen and spores studied in palynology.
This division reflects differences in the mineralogical and chemical composition of microfossil remains rather than any strict taxonomic or ecological distinctions. Most researchers in this field, known as micropaleontologists, are specialists in one or more taxonomic groups. Calcareous microfossils include coccoliths, calcareous dinoflagellate cysts, ostracods. Phosphatic microfossils include conodonts, some scolecodonts, Shark spines and teeth, other Fish remains. Siliceous microfossils include diatoms, silicoflagellates, phytoliths, some scolecodonts, sponge spicules; the study of organic microfossils is called palynology. Organic microfossils include pollen, chitinozoans, acritarchs, dinoflagellate cysts, fungal remains. Sediment or rock samples are collected from either cores or outcrops, the microfossils they contain are extracted by a variety of physical and chemical laboratory techniques, including sieving, density separation by centrifuge or in heavy liquids, chemical digestion of the unwanted fraction.
The resulting concentrated sample of microfossils is mounted on a slide for analysis by light microscope. Taxa are identified and counted; the enormous numbers of microfossils that a small sediment sample can yield allows the collection of statistically robust datasets which can be subjected to multivariate analysis. A typical microfossil study will involve identification of a few hundred specimens from each sample. Microfossils are specially noteworthy for their importance in biostratigraphy. Since microfossils are extremely abundant and quick to appear and disappear from the stratigraphic record, they constitute ideal index fossils from a biostratigraphic perspective; the planktonic and nektonic habits of some microfossils give them the bonus of appearing across a wide range of facies or paleoenvironments, as well as having near-global distribution, making biostratigraphic correlation more powerful and effective. Microfossils from deep-sea sediments provide some of the most important records of global environmental change on long, medium or short timescales.
Across vast areas of the ocean floor, the shells of planktonic micro-organisms sinking from surface waters provide the dominant source of sediment, they continuously accumulate. Study of changes in assemblages of microfossils and changes in their shell chemistry are fundamental to research on climate change in the geological past. In addition to providing an excellent tool for sedimentary rock dating and for paleoenvironmental reconstruction – used in both petroleum geology and paleoceanography – micropaleontology has found a number of less orthodox applications, such as its growing role in forensic police investigation or in determining the provenance of archaeological artefacts. Micropaleontology is a tool of geoarchaeology used in the archaeological reconstruction of human habitation sites and environments. Changes in the microfossil population abundance in the stratigraphy of current and former water bodies reflect changes in environmental conditions. Occurring ostracods in freshwater bodies are impacted b
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. It is an odd-toed ungulate mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae; the horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BC, their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses; these feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated, such as the endangered Przewalski's horse, a separate subspecies, the only remaining true wild horse. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, colors, breeds and behavior. Horses' anatomy enables them to make use of speed to escape predators and they have a well-developed sense of balance and a strong fight-or-flight response.
Related to this need to flee from predators in the wild is an unusual trait: horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down, with younger horses tending to sleep more than adults. Female horses, called mares, carry their young for 11 months, a young horse, called a foal, can stand and run shortly following birth. Most domesticated horses begin training in harness between the ages of two and four, they reach full adult development by age five, have an average lifespan of between 25 and 30 years. Horse breeds are loosely divided into three categories based on general temperament: spirited "hot bloods" with speed and endurance. There are more than 300 breeds of horse in the world today, developed for many different uses. Horses and humans interact in a wide variety of sport competitions and non-competitive recreational pursuits, as well as in working activities such as police work, agriculture and therapy. Horses were used in warfare, from which a wide variety of riding and driving techniques developed, using many different styles of equipment and methods of control.
Many products are derived from horses, including meat, hide, hair and pharmaceuticals extracted from the urine of pregnant mares. Humans provide domesticated horses with food and shelter, as well as attention from specialists such as veterinarians and farriers. Specific terms and specialized language are used to describe equine anatomy, different life stages and breeds. Depending on breed and environment, the modern domestic horse has a life expectancy of 25 to 30 years. Uncommonly, a few animals live into their 40s and beyond; the oldest verifiable record was "Old Billy", a 19th-century horse that lived to the age of 62. In modern times, Sugar Puff, listed in Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living pony, died in 2007 at age 56. Regardless of a horse or pony's actual birth date, for most competition purposes a year is added to its age each January 1 of each year in the Northern Hemisphere and each August 1 in the Southern Hemisphere; the exception is in endurance riding, where the minimum age to compete is based on the animal's actual calendar age.
The following terminology is used to describe horses of various ages: Foal: A foal of either sex less than one year old. A nursing foal is sometimes called a suckling and a foal, weaned is called a weanling. Most domesticated foals are weaned at five to seven months of age, although foals can be weaned at four months with no adverse physical effects. Yearling: A horse of either sex, between one and two years old. Colt: A male horse under the age of four. A common terminology error is to call any young horse a "colt", when the term only refers to young male horses. Filly: A female horse under the age of four. Mare: A female horse four years old and older. Stallion: A non-castrated male horse four years old and older; the term "horse" is sometimes used colloquially to refer to a stallion. Gelding: A castrated male horse of any age. In horse racing, these definitions may differ: For example, in the British Isles, Thoroughbred horse racing defines colts and fillies as less than five years old. However, Australian Thoroughbred racing defines fillies as less than four years old.
The height of horses is measured at the highest point of the withers. This point is used because it is a stable point of the anatomy, unlike the head or neck, which move up and down in relation to the body of the horse. In English-speaking countries, the height of horses is stated in units of hands and inches: one hand is equal to 4 inches; the height is expressed as the number of full hands, followed by a point the number of additional inches, ending with the abbreviation "h" or "hh". Thus, a horse described; the size of horses varies by breed, but is influenced by nutrition. Light riding horses range in height from 14 to 16 hands and can weigh from 380 to 550 kilograms. Larger riding horses start at about 15.2 hands and are as tall as 17 hands, weighing from 500 to 600 kilograms. Heavy or draft horses are at least 16 hands (64 inches, 16
Tongva
The Tongva are Native Americans who inhabited the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering 4,000 square miles. The Tongva are known as the Gabrieleño and Fernandeño, names derived from the Spanish missions built on their territory: Mission San Gabriel Arcángel and Mission San Fernando Rey de España. Along with the neighboring Chumash, the Tongva were the most powerful indigenous people to inhabit Southern California. At the time of European contact, they may have numbered 5,000 to 10,000. Many lines of evidence suggest that the Tongva are descended of Uto-Aztecan-speaking peoples from Nevada who moved southwest into coastal Southern California 3,500 years ago; these migrants either pushed out the Hokan-speaking peoples in the region. By 500 AD, the Tongva had come to occupy all the lands now associated with them. A hunter-gatherer society, the Tongva traded with neighboring peoples. Over time, scattered communities came to speak distinct dialects of the Tongva language, part of the Takic subgroup of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
There may have been five or more such dialects. The Tongva language became extinct in the twentieth century, but a reconstructed form continues to be spoken today. Initial Spanish exploration of the Los Angeles area occurred in 1542, but sustained contact with the Tongva came only after Mission San Gabriel Arcángel was constructed in 1771; this marked the beginning of an era of forced relocation and exposure to Old World diseases, leading to the rapid collapse of the Tongva population. At times the Tongva violently resisted Spanish rule, such as the 1785 rebellion led by the female chief Toypurina. In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain and the government sold mission lands to ranchers, forcing the Tongva to culturally assimilate. Three decades California was ceded to the United States following the Mexican–American War; the US government signed treaties with the Tongva, promising 8.5 million acres of land for reservations, but these treaties were never ratified. By the turn of the 20th century, the Island Tongva had disappeared and the mainland communities were nearing extinction.
The endonym Tongva was recorded by American ethnographer C. Hart Merriam in 1903 and has been adopted by scholars and descendants, although some prefer the endonym Kizh. Since 2006, there have been four organizations claiming to represent the Tongva Nation: the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe, known as the "hyphen" group from the hyphen in their name. Two of the groups are the result of a hostile split over the question of building an Indian casino. In 1994, the state of California recognized the Tongva "as the aboriginal tribe of the Los Angeles Basin," but no group representing the Tongva has attained recognition by the federal government. In 2008, more than 1,700 people claimed partial ancestry; the first record of an endonym for the Tongva people was Kizh, from 1846. Although subsequent authors equated this with the word for "house", Hale gives the word for house as kītç in a list where the language was called "Kīj", suggesting that the words were distinct; the term Kizh was used at that time to designate the language, the first comprehensive publication on the language used it.
In 1875, Yarrow indicated. He reported that the natives called themselves Tobikhar, meaning "settlers", spoke exclusively Spanish. In 1885, Hoffman referred to the natives as Tobikhar; the word Tongva was recorded by Merriam in 1903 from a single informant. Merriam could not pronounce the village name Toviscangna He ( abbreviated or spelled it Tong-vā; the name Tongva has become preferred as a self-designation since the 1990s, although either "Gabrieleño" or "Gabrielino" is part of every official name. The territory which in historical times was occupied by the kizh People of the willow houses had been inhabited for more than 10,000 years. A prehistoric milling area estimated to be 8,000 years old was discovered in 2006 at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains near Azusa, California; the find yielded arrowheads and stone slabs used to grind seeds as well as tools and implements, but no human or animal bones. The Chowigna site in Palos Verdes, excavated in the 1930s, dates back 7,100 years or more.
In 2007 and early 2008, over 174 ancient American Indian remains were unearthed by archaeologists at a development site of Brightwater Hearthside Homes in the Bolsa Chica Mesa area in Huntington Beach, California. This land was once shared by the Acjachemem tribes; the site was in legal limbo for years before Hearthside was given permission to start construction of over 300 homes. The Tongva and Acjachemem Indians are in dispute over the remains; as speakers of a language of the Uto-Aztecan family, the remote ancestors of the Tongva coalesced as a people in the Sonoran Desert, between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago. This was a center of that language family; the diversity within the Takic group is "moderately deep". The division of the Tongva-Serrano group into the separate Tongva and Serrano peoples is more recent, may have been influenced by
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the largest natural and historical museum in the western United States. Its collections include nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history. This large collection is comprised not only of specimens for exhibition, but of vast research collections housed on and offsite; the museum is an association of three Los Angeles area museums: The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, The Page Museum at The La Brea Tar Pits in Hancock Park and The William S. Hart Ranch and Museum in Newhall, Santa Clarita, California; the three museums work together to achieve their common mission: "to inspire wonder and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds." NHM opened in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, United States in 1913 as The Museum of History and Art. The moving force behind it was a museum association founded in 1910, its distinctive main building, with fitted marble walls and domed and colonnaded rotunda, is on The National Register of Historic Places.
Additional wings opened in 1925, 1930, 1960, 1976. The museum was divided in 1961 into The Los Angeles County Museum of History and Science and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. LACMA moved to new quarters on Wilshire Boulevard in 1965, the Museum of History and Science was renamed The Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History; the museum renamed itself again, becoming The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. In 2003, the museum began a campaign to transform its visitor experience; the museum reopened its seismically retrofitted renovated 1913 rotunda, along with the new Age of Mammals exhibition. In 2010, its Dinosaur Hall opened in July 2011. A new Los Angeles history exhibition, Becoming Los Angeles, opened in 2013; the outdoor Nature Gardens and Nature Lab, which explore L. A. wildlife opened in 2013. The museum maintains research and collections in the following fields: Annelida Anthropology and Archaeology Ethnology Crustacea Echinoderms Entomology Herpetology History Ichthyology Invertebrate paleontology Malacology Mammalogy Mineralogy Ornithology Vertebrate paleontologyThe museum has three floors of permanent exhibits.
Among the most popular museum displays are those devoted to animal habitats, pre-Columbian cultures, The Ralph M. Parsons Discovery Center and Insect Zoo, the new Nature Lab, which explores urban wildlife in Southern California; the museum's collections are strong in many fields, but the mineralogy and Pleistocene paleontology are the most esteemed, the latter thanks to the wealth of specimens collected from The La Brea Tar Pits. The museum has 30 million specimens representing marine zoology; these include one of the largest collections of marine mammal remains in the world, housed in a warehouse off site, which at over 5,000 specimens is second in size only to that of The Smithsonian. The museum's collection of historical documents is held in The Seaver Center for Western History Research; the museum hosts regular special exhibitions which advance its mission. Recent special exhibits have included Pterosaurs; the museum hosts a butterfly pavilion outside every spring and summer and a spider pavilion on the same site in the fall.
Over the years, the museum has built additions onto its original building. Dedicated when The Natural History Museum opened its doors in 1913, the rotunda is one of the museum's most elegant and popular spaces. Lined with marble columns and crowned by a stained glass dome, the room is the home of the first piece of public art funded by Los Angeles County, a Beaux Arts statue by Julia Bracken Wendt entitled Three Muses, or History and Art; this hall is among the most distinctive locales in Los Angeles and has been used as a filming location. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County official website William S. Hart Ranch and Museum George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits Review of the Museum's new Dinosaur Hall at the New York Times, July 19, 2011Slide show of exhibit
