After 66 million years, a few more months doesn’t seem like too long a wait. That’s all the time that remains before the Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park is scheduled to open this summer.
The 44,000-square-foot facility in Mantua will sit above a former marl quarry where Mesozoic Era marine and terrestrial fossils have been found.
Rowan University broke ground on a $73 million dinosaur fossil park and museum in 2021 on the site of a prehistoric treasure trove of relics just a few miles from its campus in Glassboro.
“We’ve been working on this project for more than a decade,” Ric Edelman, a school alumni who has contributed more than $25 million for the facility, told NJ Advance Media earlier this month. “It’s very gratifying to see everyone’s enthusiasm.”
Edelman said he expects the site to open in June. He will also be the keynote speaker at the school’s commencement ceremony in May.
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.
“You will not only be able to put your hands in the dirt and walk the 60-plus acres of the park, you’ll also be able to experience what the world was like 66-million-years ago and the incredible diversity of life that existed on this planet to help you connect with the past in a very real, physical endeavor,” Edelman said. “This will not only ground you in today’s world, it’ll help remind you of where we came from and the threats that we face going forward.”
Visitors to the site will be able to dig for fossils and keep many of their finds as souvenirs. But some of the discoveries may be kept for further research if they are rare.
Only a few hundred square yards of the 65-acre site have been fully excavated. Still, they’ve 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.
The museum will feature immersive exhibits, galleries, full-scale reconstructions of extinct creatures, hands-on learning experiences, live animal attractions, virtual reality, and other opportunities to connect to the natural world, a statement on the facility website said.
“This is going to be not only an incredibly entertaining experience, it’s going to be a profound educational one, as well,” Edelman told NJ Advance Media. “We think it will have a very big impact on shaping the hearts and minds of today’s students that are going to be tomorrow’s scientists.”
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 expect to turn up more important finds, the school said.
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.
Researchers have said 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.
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Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com.
