Ancient frog just found in La Brea Tar Pits could change everything we know about prehistoric LA
Scientists have identified a new extinct spadefoot toad species, Spea labreae, from a fossil originally excavated at the La Brea Tar Pits in 1929. The discovery, made by lead author Jose Alberto Cruz, marks the first extinct amphibian found in Los Angeles and provides evidence that Ice Age Los Angeles was colder and wetter. Researchers say the find also suggests the Mexican burrowing toad once inhabited the region before disappearing due to climate shifts or human activity.
- ▪The fossil, an incomplete sacro-urostyle bone, was reexamined and determined to belong to a previously unknown species named Spea labreae.
- ▪Spea labreae is slightly larger than modern spadefoot toads and is the second Ice Age amphibian species identified in North America.
- ▪The amphibian’s sensitivity to climate makes its remains a valuable indicator of past environmental conditions in the Los Angeles area.
- ▪Co-author Emily Lindsey noted that the discovery provides strong clues about the colder, wetter climate of Ice Age Los Angeles and the former presence of the Mexican burrowing toad.
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| Original publisher | California Post |
| Canonical URL | https://nypost.com/2026/08/05/science/ice-age-toad-found-at-la-brea-tar-pits-changes-what-we-know-about-prehistoric-la/ |
| Publication time | Wed, 05 Aug 2026 19:51:07 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-06T00:03:12.497Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-06T00:03:12.497Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | ZNetu_4O5JhQ · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Science Ancient frog just found in La Brea Tar Pits could change everything we know about prehistoric LA By Daniel Farr Published Aug. 5, 2026, 7:51 p.m. ET (function() { var overlay = document.getElementById("nyp-player-lcp-overlay"); if (!overlay) { return; } function hideOverlay() { overlay.remove(); } function afterDCL() { requestAnimationFrame(hideOverlay); } if (document.readyState === "loading") { document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", afterDCL, { once: true }); } else { afterDCL(); } })(); See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The California Post on Google A forgotten fossil sitting in a museum drawer for nearly 100 years has turned out to be a game-changing Ice Age discovery.
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