[I’m out in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument for some late season fieldwork this week. Here’s an essay from the archive, originally posted November 28, 2011.]

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”