Tar pit

For other uses, see Tar pit (disambiguation).

Tierra La Brea, Trinidad

A tar pit, or more accurately known as an asphalt pit or asphalt lake, is a geological occurrence where subterranean bitumen leaks to the surface, creating a large area of natural asphalt.

Known tar pits

La Brea Tar Pits, California

There are only a few known asphalt lakes worldwide:

• Tierra de Brea at La Brea, Trinidad and Tobago
• Lake Bermudez at Libertador, Estado Sucre, Venezuela
• La Brea Tar Pits Los Angeles, California, US
• McKittrick Tar Pits at McKittrick near Bakersfield, California, US
• Carpinteria Tar Pits at Carpinteria, Santa Barbara County, California, US
• Tar pits in Hit, Iraq

There are other fossil-bearing asphalt deposits in Oklahoma, Texas, Peru, Trinidad, Iran, Russia and Poland.

For other rich deposits, fossilized where they occurred, see Lagerstätten. Tar pits are the resting places of many fossils.

Paleontological significance

Animals are usually unable to escape from the asphalt when they fall in, making these pits excellent locations to excavate bones of prehistoric animals. The La Brea Tar Pits Museum is built around the tar pit and houses the fossilized remains of mammals and birds found within. The tar pits can trap animals because the asphalt that seeps up from underground forms a bitumen pit thick enough to relentlessly grab even mammoths until they die of starvation, exhaustion of trying to escape or from the heat that would come from the sun.

In computer science

Cover of The Mythical Man-Month

Brooks in his seminal work The Mythical Man-Month (1975) has a chapter entitled "The tar pit", alluding to the tendency of software projects, once in trouble, never to escape from that trouble, any attempt to do so making it worse.

See also

• Petroleum seep