TRAVEL TALES : WELL, HERE'S ANOTHER FINE MESS...

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

Stuck in the ooze, the female mastodon raised her tusks to the sky, making one final effort to break free of the sticky tar that dragged her down. Onshore, her baby and its father watched helplessly.

Watching the modern-day re-creation at the La Brea Tar Pits outside the George C. Page Museum of how now-extinct animals were stuck in the asphalt that ultimately imprisoned them forever, 2-year-old Frankie Osby of Woodland Hills was enchanted.

``Barney!'' he grinned, reaching through the fence toward the animal models that were too far away for him to reach.

``He loves dinosaurs,'' said his mother, Willia Osby, laughing. ``He thinks that's what those are. This is a great place to bring kids. Frankie loves it.''

The toddler is one of thousands of children - and adults - who come each year to see the spot where, centuries ago, asphalt seeped to the earth's surface during warm summer weather. Then the shallow puddles of the sticky stuff were concealed by a coating of windblown leaves and dust. Occasionally, an unwary animal became trapped in the ooze and could not escape. Often, the trapped animals lured others in.

``The animals didn't know that down below was sticky tar,'' wrote Tanya Femley, a third-grader at Providence School in Burbank, in an essay posted at the museum. ``Then the animals went in the water and they got stuck. Other animals tried to eat the ones that were stuck and they also got stuck. Then they sank and died. Their bones stayed in the tar.''

That, in short, is the story of what occurred in the spot that today is Hancock Park, off glittery Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Children - thousands visit the museum each year on field trips - find the story fascinating, said Gina Ward, director of media relations for the museum.

``For children to think that between 10,000 and 40,000 years ago, saber-toothed tigers and mammoths were roaming the area where they are today really sparks their imagination,'' Ward said. ``The exhibits really let them see what it must have been like back then.''

The museum itself, built in 1972, is no dry, aloof repository of fossils, but one filled with interactive exhibits. One - which features pistons with handles, sunk in heavy oil - urges kids to pull with all their might to raise them, likening that to the amount of pull that dragged the animals down thousands of years ago.

While there are gobs of dark brown skeletons on display (the bones dyed by the tar that imprisoned them) ranging in size from the smallest birds to the fiercest tigers to the biggest mastodons (the most impressive is the imperial mammoth, more than 13 feet tall, with two giant tusks that extend out over visitors' heads), there are a few that help flesh out the story behind the bones.

Behind a special glass, a holographic saber-toothed tiger skeleton suddenly acquires flesh and skin and snarls at those watching, then changes back to a skeleton again. In another spot, behind the same kind of special glass, the holographic skeleton of a woman - dubbed La Brea Woman, the only human whose remains have been found in the pits, estimated to have been 20 to 25 years old when she became trapped in the tar some 9,000 years ago - changes before visitors' eyes, turning briefly into a woman with long black hair and wearing a loincloth, before becoming a skeleton again.

Two animatronic exhibits are favorites. A wooly mammoth growls and tosses his head in one exhibit hall; in another, a sad-eyed giant sloth tries in vain to fight off a saber-toothed cat clinging to his back, fangs bared. There are also films about the museum and other natural history subjects running continuously in a small theater, and kids can pick up a telephone receiver to listen in on the story of the area's evolution through the centuries.

Visitors also can watch scientists and volunteers painstakingly cleaning, sorting and cataloging bones still being found in the pits near the museum. For the next few months, the curious also can watch the museum's annual dig for more bones and fossils. Digging began in Pit 91, one of the richest archeological areas in the park, earlier this month and will continue through the summer.

``This is the only excavation of its kind in the world,'' said Christopher Shaw, the dig's project manager and a vertebrate paleontologist. ``In the last week, we found the lower jaw of a giant American lion and the complete upper saber of a saber-toothed cat. Last year, we found the pelvis of a giant ground sloth - and for the first time in the world, we found gut contents, so we can tell what the animal had to eat right before he died. It's amazing some of the things we're finding.''

Where to find the stars of tar

The George C. Page Museum, at 5801 Wilshire Blvd., in Los Angeles' Hancock Park, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Through Aug. 26, the museum also will be open Mondays. Admission is $6 for adults, $3.50 for students and seniors 62 and older, $2 for children ages 5-10; admission is free the first Tuesday of each month.

The Lake Pit mastodon exhibit is in front of the museum. Excavations are behind the museum and the nearby County Museum of Art. Visitors can watch the Pit 91 excavation from an observation platform over the pit from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday through Sept. 1; there is no charge.

Information: [phone] (recorded) or [phone].

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Box

Photo: (1) At the La Brea Tar Pits, a re-creation s hows how now-extinct animals, including mastodons, were stuck in the asphalt that ultimately imprisoned them forever.

(2) The George C. Page Museum features two animatronic exhibits, including a sad-eyed giant sloth trying in vain to fight off a saber-toothed cat.

Carol Bidwell/Daily News

Box: Where to find the stars of tar (See Text)