When I think of the La Brea asphalt seeps, coyotes don’t immediately jump to mind. Sabercats and dire wolves are the sorts of carnivore I have come to associate with the oozing predator trap. Yet coyotes were there in abundance. According to a monograph on the site I picked up from the Page Musuem gift shop — written by paleontologist Chester Stock and later revised by John Harris — coyotes are regularly found in the asphalt and are about one-eighth as numerous as their fearsome cousins, the dire wolves.

The prehistoric coyotes were not quite the same as those we know today. They belonged to the very same species — Canis latrans — but the Ice Age versions were significantly larger