"No city anywhere has anything that's comparable. You have this trap, basically, that was just sitting here and collecting all of Los Angeles life for the last 60,000 years."

Regan Dunn, a paleobotanist and curator at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, describing what makes the site irreplaceable and what makes moving its 3.5 million fossils for a two-year renovation so daunting. The museum closes July 6 for a massive overhaul, with every bone requiring a custom foam shell, before reopening in 2028 as the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research. (Los Angeles Times)