asphalt lake

a pool formed largely of bitumen (almost entirely carbon and hydrogen, but some oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur) found mainly in southern USA and South America. The La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles are an example, in which trapped animals have been preserved since the Miocene period.

Collins Dictionary of Biology, 3rd ed. © W. G. Hale, V. A. Saunders, J. P. Margham 2005

References in periodicals archive ?

Close by is La Brea, the site of Trinidad's astonishing asphalt lake which was discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh and ignored thereafter.

Add to that the methanol plants, cement factories and one of the world's biggest asphalt lakes and you've got the recipe for untold wealth, health and happiness.

TRAVEL: SOC IT TO 'EM; IAIN MAYHEW'S FEELIN' HOT, HOT, HOT AT TRINIDAD'S CARNIVAL

Still, as Jeff Goldblum's character observed in the film "Jurassic Park," "Life finds a way," and Earth is home to its own strange extremophiles: microbes that can thrive in liquid asphalt lakes, tiny animals called tardigrades that can survive the hard vacuum of space, and bacteria that can grow without oxygen.