She discovered and described Pleistocene flightless waterfowl at the prehistoric Ballona wetlands of coastal Los Angeles County at Playa del Rey.

[5] That same year, Howard joined the scientific staff of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History part-time; her work there on the extinct turkey Parapavo californicus was credited towards her master's degree, which was received in 1926[4] at Berkeley.

[7] Her initial title was Junior clerk and Howard's job was researching fossils from the Rancho La Brea as well as curating them.

The La Brea tar Pits were filled with vast quantities of bird bones, which would provide extensive research potential for Howard throughout her life.

Howard's first introduction to the field was sorting bones from La Brea at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, where she would also meet her future husband Henry Anson Wylde.

[7] Howard was allowed to research a coracoid bone (between the shoulder blade and sternum) discovered for a species of bird not yet known by the public record.

[7] Howard conducted an experiment in which she took wasps from their home ecosystem and brought them to a greenhouse to see how they would take to the conditions of isolation and whether or not they would nest in that environment.

[11] In this paper, Howard examined the possibility of regeneration after a man claimed that a Northern pintail duck who had its wing shot off was able to grow it back.

[13] At the Los Angeles Museum, a collection called Rancho La Brea contains the bones of the Horned Owl which she had noted to be abnormal.

[14] She goes into a full-depth investigation along with evidence filled with measurements and comparisons and finally comes to the conclusion that the bones found in the exhibit were of a new species, which is now named the Strix Brea.

[14] Located in the Conkling Cavern in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, the remains of extinct mammals were found and were initially hypothesized to be from the Geococcyx californianus.

A year earlier, fossils were discovered two miles away in another cave, whose size was similar to the specimen and exemplified further the dissimilarity with the great roadrunner.