I’m picky about my paleo t-shirts. If I’m going to lay down twenty five bucks for fossil-themed apparel from a museum gift shop, I want the long-extinct critter on the tee to look reasonably accurate, and geeky humor is always a bonus.

My standards led me to an indecisive moment at the Page Museum gift shop at the La Brea asphalt seeps during my visit to Los Angeles in September. One of the souvenir shirts had the line “What happens in the La Brea Tar Pits stays in the La Brea Tar Pits” with a fluffy mammoth stuck in the black morass. I loved the joke, but my inner scientist – nit-picky bastard that he is – chimed in with “But