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While the toad may be much smaller than the mammoths and saber-toothed cats that made the Tar Pits famous, this discovery has a big impact on our understanding of the climate at the end of the last ice age.

Described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, S. labreae spotlights the ongoing daily discoveries at the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research at La Brea Tar Pits as the iconic museum begins a historic transformation.

The study's lead author, Dr. Alberto Cruz, wasn't looking for new species when he began his review of the Tar Pits' understudied collections of amphibians and reptiles as a postdoctoral fellow working at La Brea Tar Pits, where he remains a research associate while working full time as a researcher for Mexico's SECIHTI-Centro de Investigación Paleontológica Quinametzin (CIPAQ), Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH).

"I'm really more of a paleoecologist and paleogeographer, not a taxonomist," Cruz says. He first noticed the distinctive features that separate S. labreae from known spadefoot toads while reviewing the Tar Pits' collection of reptiles and amphibians.

His first thought on seeing the new species was that the specimen had been sick or injured during its life, an example of paleopathology, rather than a new species. However, further comparisons to modern spadefoot toads left no doubt.

"I reviewed and reviewed a lot of specimens until I was convinced. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, this is a new species.' This material is originally from the 1950s, but when you study it again, you can find gold in these specimens. It's very cool."

"It's a great example of how we're still finding new things at La Brea Tar Pits, even after a century of ongoing excavation and research," says Dr. Emily Lindsey, curator and excavation site director at the Samuel Oschin Center for Global Ice Age Research at La Brea Tar Pits. "There's definitely more to come."

Ancient climate through the lens of amphibians

While the iconic large mammals often grab headlines and capture our imagination, the small reptiles and amphibians Cruz studies can tell scientists much more about ancient climate and environmental change.

Amphibians don't travel very far within their lifetimes and are extremely sensitive to environmental conditions. This limited movement and high sensitivity make amphibians excellent climate proxies, whose presence or absence can help scientists discern changes in climate on a smaller scale.

"If you change the environment, you change the vegetation, the climate is warmer or colder, it affects these animals directly," Cruz says.

Due to their fragile skeletons, amphibians like frogs, toads and salamanders rarely make it into the fossil record outside of asphaltic sites like the Tar Pits. The discovery of a new species—particularly a small amphibian like S. labreae—is an extraordinary find at the Tar Pits.

Their fragility and sensitivity to environmental changes also lead researchers like Cruz to suspect that there are many more extinct amphibians and reptiles whose remains were too delicate to make it into the fossil record.

To identify the new species, Cruz examined the bones of Tar Pits amphibians, a collection that had not been carefully assessed in nearly 30 years. Making detailed observations of their shape and size, Cruz compared Tar Pits amphibians to 80 specimens at the Herpetology Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Along with the newly described species, the study identifies the first record of the Mexican burrowing toad, Rhinophrynus, from the southwestern United States. These living toads are no longer found in modern Los Angeles, and their nearest populations are nearly 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) away in southern Mexico.

This significant range shift, along with the extinction of S. labreae, further illuminates the multifaceted story of environmental change at the end of the last ice age and helps us understand how they might cope with today's human-caused climate change.

Publication details

A new extinct Pleistocene species of spadefoot toad and comments on the paleoecology and paleobiogeography of anurans from rancho La Brea, Q1 California, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (2026). DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2026.2689465

Who's behind this story?

Sadie Harley

BSc Life Sciences & Ecology. Microbiology lab background with pharmaceutical news experience in oil, gas, and renewable industries. Full profile →

Robert Egan

Bachelor's in mathematical biology, Master's in creative writing. Well-traveled with unique perspectives on science and language. Full profile →

Citation: A new species of Ice Age toad discovered at La Brea Tar Pits: The spadefoot toad Spea labreae (2026, August 5) retrieved 5 August 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-08-species-ice-age-toad-la.html

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Season 4 introduces a premise that gives Jason Sudeikis’ titular American-football-turned-British-football coach a chance at both a fresh start and a return to old stomping grounds. Two years after Ted walked away from AFC Richmond and took his signature mustache back to Kansas City, team owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), marketing chief Keeley (Juno Temple) and operations head Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) arrive stateside with an offer he can’t refuse: coaching the club’s brand-new women’s team, who begin their existence as the underdogs — specifically, Greyhounds — their male counterparts once were. Given the cultural bias against women’s sports leagues, they’ll likely remain so even if they succeed.

The concepts of class reunion (Ted goes back to London and gets the gang back together!) and clean slate (Ted takes on a new challenge!) are somewhat at odds. Sure enough, Season 4 is far more enjoyable as the latter than the former — even as “Ted Lasso” keeps privileging nostalgia and tired subplots over its best chance at a renaissance. Tanya Reynolds of “Sex Education” is a welcome addition as Alice Chilton, a coach whose constant scowl and clipped severity make her a well-suited foil for Ted’s sunny optimism until she inevitably warms to it. But, at least in the five episodes provided to critics out of an eventual 10, she’s pretty much the only new character who feels fully established, because “Ted Lasso” refuses to make room in the ensemble by sidelining (or is it touchlining?) old ones.

Like Sudeikis, actor Brett Goldstein remains a creative force behind the camera, which may explain why his churlish then player, now coach Roy Kent remains such a presence despite the pivot away from his men’s squad. But while foregrounding Rebecca and Keeley makes sense given the renewed focus on women in sports, Roy and Keeley’s on-again, off-again romance lost its allure several seasons ago. Figures like Roy and Ted’s longtime deputy Beard (series co-creator Brendan Hunt) would be better deployed as occasional cameos, yet they remain load-bearing — and space-occupying — protagonists. The consequences can border on the absurd: a major decision by Ted’s ex-wife Michelle (Andrea Anders) is sped through rather than shown from her perspective; an episode hinges on a team problem with cliques that’s only depicted onscreen far too late. Until then, we’re mostly told about it by other characters with longer tenures.

Contributing to the sense of overcrowding is an otherwise welcome development: no single episode of the first five clocks in at over an hour, the way so much of Season 3 did. “Ted Lasso” is not for everyone; the blindingly earnest social consciousness and relentless positivity some find so grating remain firmly in place. (Feminist commentary was never the series’ strong suit, and centering the women’s team prompts more of it than ever.) But Season 4 reigns in some excesses and offers glimpses of fresh new faces: a walk-on player who’s also a single mom; a goalie who refuses to wear gloves; a new mentor for Rebecca, played by comic legend Tracey Ullmann. If only the show would clear the field for them. %!s()

Three years after a Season 3 finale that sure did feel like a series finale at the time, Ted Lasso is back for a fourth season after all. In the modern streaming world, it’s become far too typical for a three-year gap between seasons to become something of a norm. At least Ted Lasso is accounting for this prolonged break in a bigger way, with a semi-reboot approach that feels more akin to a show being revived 10-15 years later rather than one we last saw the same year Oppenheimer was in movie theaters.

The third season ended with Ted (Jason Sudeikis) returning home to America and realizing it was time to stop being the semi-deadbeat dad he’d become, given his young son was back in Kansas City while Ted had been overseas coaching AFC Richmond. Season 4’s premiere is notable, because it’s actually entirely set in Kansas City. Ted is surprised when Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), Leslie (Jeremy Swift), and Keeley (Juno Temple) show up on his doorstep, hoping to recruit him to return to London to coach the new AFC Richmond women’s division team.

The premiere was shot on location in Kansas City, giving it a markedly different visual landscape than your typical Ted Lasso episode, and it makes the most of it. And there’s plenty of comic mileage drawn from making Rebecca, Leslie, and Keeley the fish out of water for once, as they take in these new sights and sounds. The cast all slip very comfortably back into their characters, whether it be the sweet and funny sisterly connection Waddingham and Temple exude, or the lovably dorky demeanor of Swift’s Leslie.

As for the title character, series co-creator and EP Sudeikis still wears the smile and stache of Ted like he was born for it. Ted’s gotten through the mental health issues that plagued him early on, but we find him at a restless point of his life, working as an assistant manager at a supermarket. He’s still maintaining his usual sunny disposition, but clearly without a true sense of fulfillment. Of course, there’s not a lot of dramatic tension as to whether he’ll accept the offer to coach again — there’s a whole season’s worth of episodes to fill, and we’ve seen the trailers — but the premiere does a solid job of showing how Ted gets to the point where he can admit that’s what he wants to do.

Pushing things on the credibility side though is how the premiere deals with the fact that Ted not only wouldn’t want to leave his son Henry (now played by Grant Feely) again, but wouldn’t want to ask to separate Henry from his mother, Ted’s ex-wife Michelle (Andrea Anders). The solution feels far too easy and convenient, awkwardly handwaving what would likely be a very difficult conversation in real life.

Given the nature of the premiere and how focused it is — no other series regulars appear beyond the four mentioned above, and we never actually see London — it’s hard to be sure how much it will reflect the remainder of the season. But the approach it takes is promising as far as its willingness to lock in on just a few characters and interconnected situations.

While Ted Lasso never lost its kindhearted center, Season 3 was notably overindulgent and often felt lacking in form after EP/co-creator Bill Lawrence stepped back as showrunner. This was demonstrated by its incredibly overlong episode runtimes, which frequently hit a full hour or more in the midst of a show that began with half-hour installments. The amount of subplots and side stories got out of control to the point that we somehow were following the inner workings of two different restaurants at one point on a series that was meant to be about a soccer team.

The premiere does give hope that Sudeikis and new co-showrunner Jack Burditt have learned that less can be more. “

As we prep to meet AFC Richmond's women's team, it’s definitely going to be odd adjusting to saying goodbye to the entire team we’ve spent the last three seasons invested in, and I do worry that it will feel even more difficult to move on thanks to the show still being set in the same location as before with most of the same support staff in place. It likely would have been an easier transition to send Ted and a few key players to an all new part of the world for a cleaner break from what came before, but even as we prep for these big changes, the premiere does give hope that Sudeikis and new co-showrunner Jack Burditt have learned that less can be more. Ted Lasso needed to feel more reined in again… albeit with a 47-minute runtime. Hey, that’s still short by Season 3’s standards! And while we have yet to meet the new team, the prospect of returning to the Season 1 feel of Ted and his team getting to know each other and once more starting from a true underdog perspective is a welcome one.

Verdict

Ted Lasso sets the stage for its return with an extended prologue of sorts, explaining what Ted’s been up to back in Kansas City before some old friends come calling in order to lure him back to coaching in London. Even though Season 3 often felt incredibly overstuffed, the core characters remained charming and likable, and that’s underlined here by a premiere that focuses only on Ted, Rebecca, Leslie, and Keeley, reminding fans why we were drawn to them in the first place. It remains to be seen if Ted Lasso fully has its mojo back this season, and how the new team that Ted’s coaching will compare to the former group, but for now it’s a promising start.

In This Article

Ted Lasso Season 4 Premiere Review

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Ted Lasso returns with an engaging Kansas City-set season premiere that catches us up with Ted and a few key characters, setting the stage for the show’s new soft reboot approach following a three-year absence.

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