Featured VideoThe fossils were recovered from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Despite their unlikely location at the center of urban sprawl, the tar pits hold a record amount of Pleistocene life from about 45,000 years ago onward. At first, Cruz thought that the new toad species was deformed from illness or injury, but his comparisons with modern spadefoot toad specimens brought to light its unique features. While there’s no literal gold, the preserved frog—Spea labreae sp.—is an exceptional find, the first extinct amphibian species ever discovered at the tar pits. Its predecessor, the remains of which were recently uncovered from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, would have been about 7 percent larger.