"The La Brea Tar Pits is nothing but tar and bones," our parents used to tell us. But we knew better. When we thought of the bubbling primordial vista smack in the middle of suburban sprawl, we dreamed of all life and wonder and skateboarding dinosaur pals that might be lying in wait, just beneath the surface. Some of those dreaming kids grew up and became environmental scientists, and still they were perturbed by the pits, especially the methane gas bubbles that they constantly emitted. These bubbles had previously been explained as a byproduct of continuous dinosaur decomposition and petroleum production, but the intrepid scientists had the tenacity to look closer and deeper. While what they found wasn't exactly skateboarding dinosaur pals, it is still light years away from what anyone had ever thought.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Now, as you can imagine, bacteria comfortable with living in as harsh and unforgiving an environment as a fucking tar pit are no ordinary bacteria. A cross between something out of Jurassic Park and something out of X-Men, these microbes are ancient and mutant and tough and unlike anything anyone's ever seen before.

Kim and Robert Crowley, the research paper's co-author, speculate that he bacteria were probably trapped in the asphalt tons of years ago and have just evolved of their own accord, all cut off from the outside world, with these interesting side effects, But hey, did you catch that one part? The part about previously undiscovered classes of enzymes that can naturally break down petroleum products? Yeah, Kim and Crowley did, too. It may very well be the best part of the whole discovery.

Once again, amazing. This is why science will always be the most mind-bogglingly wonderful thing ever: with a world this vast, there's absolutely no shortage of places to explore or spectacular and helpful things to find, even in your own backyard. Now just keep digging a little deeper in the tar pits, guys, and we just might hit skateboarding-dinosaur gold.