An event that was 66 million years in the making took place over the weekend near Rowan University.
The Gloucester County school broke ground on a $73 million dinosaur fossil park museum on the site of a prehistoric treasure trove of relics just a few miles from its campus in Glassboro.
The 44,000-square-foot facility in Mantua Township will perch above a former marl quarry where 66 million-year-old marine and terrestrial fossils have been found.
“We are building a museum like no other, on a fossil site of global importance that will connect visitors to the ancient past...and to Rowan University,” Kenneth Lacovara, dean of the school of Earth & Environment and director of the Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park, said in a statement.
One of the museum’s planned exhibits will include a recreated Dryptosaurus, the first discovered tyrannosaur, which was found a mile from the Fossil Park site in 1866, and a 53-foot mosasaur, like one discovered at the fossil park site, a statement from the school said.
The Edelmans, Rowan alumni, “gave $25 million to develop it as a unique research ecosystem that supports scientific, undergraduate and ‘citizen science’ opportunities,” the statement said. “Pre-pandemic, the park hosted thousands of visitors per year, from school kids on bus trips to business people and community leaders, all of whom are drawn to the prospect of finding genuine, Late Cretaceous-era, fossils.”
A rendering of the Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park Museum of Rowan University. A groundbreaking ceremony was held over the weekend in Mantua Twp. N.J.
When completed, visitors to the site will be able again to dig for fossils and keep many of their finds as souvenirs. Some of the discoveries, however, will be kept for further research.
Just a few hundred square yards of the 65-acre site have been fully excavated but have still yielded more than 50,000 cataloged marine and terrestrial fossils, from reptilian mosasaurs to sea turtles, sharks, bony fish, coral and clams, the university said.
An economic impact study conducted ahead of the museum’s construction predicted that an estimated 200,000 or more fossil hunters will visit the park and museum each year, producing more than $300 million in economic activity over a 10-year period after its planned opening in 2023.
The fossil park is on the site of a former industrial sand pit. Archeologists have already turned up a fossil of the largest prehistoric crocodile ever found and researchers, led by Lacovara, expect to turn up more important finds.
Kenneth Lacovara, founding dean of the School of Earth & Environment and director of the Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park
“Thanks to the foresight and generosity of Jean and Ric Edelman, we are building a world-class tourism and educational destination that will transform the region and do great good,” Lacovara told NJ Advance Media in 2019.
New Jersey was once underwater on prehistoric Earth and the fossils on site are buried in sand as opposed to being encased in rock like archeological finds in other parts of the country. It’s one of the things that makes the fossil park unique, the university said.
Visitors to the site will have a chance to dig in areas of lesser significance, but still lined with fossils of prehistoric finds. But they must also sign a waiver allowing the university to claim any finds of historical significance.
In New Jersey, fossilized remains of several late Cretaceous-era dinosaurs and reptiles have been found along a stretch of what used to be a shallow marine environment from Atlantic Highlands in Monmouth County, through Middlesex, Mercer, Burlington and Gloucester down to Salem County and present-day Delaware.
The green sand “marl” found along this stretch of shallow water was perfect for preserving fossils of cow sharks and mosasaurus, 50-foot extinct carnivorous aquatic lizards.
Background Information previously reported by NJ.com is included in this report.
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Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com.