Dinosaurs in New Jersey: Edelman Fossil Park & Museum in Mantua to offer prehistoric fun.
That's the home of the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, where a deep quarry offers access to the sea floor — and dinosaur remnants — from 66 million ago. The museum's eye-catching displays include the 30-foot-long skeleton of a mosasaur, an aquatic reptile with chainsaw jaws.
The $75-million complex, set to open March 29, is primed to allow a largely youthful audience to gawk at prehistoric beasts in the museum and, from May through October, to dig for fossils in the quarry.
Not a bare-bones approach: Fossil park and museum open in South Jersey
'What we've accomplished here will have impact well beyond Gloucester County,' Rowan President Ali Houshmand said at a ribbon-cutting March 20. "Soon enough, school buses full of children will experience this amazing facility.'
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who also attended the ribbon-cutting, called this a day for the history books.
"It will attract people from all across the country," Murphy said.
The museum's own history dates to 2003, when paleontologist Ken Lacovara, then at Drexel University in Philadelphia, learned of the Mantua quarry and its rare window into the past.
The quarry, also called a marl pit, was owned by Inversand Co., a Clayton firm that mined clay.
Over the next few years, Lacovara worked with Michelle Bruner, Mantua's director of economic development, to build grassroots support for the fossil site. That included "community dig days" at the still-privately owned quarry off an access road near the intersection of southbound Route 55 and Woodbury-Glassboro Road.
"I was hoping that maybe 75 people would show up on a Saturday morning to dig fossils with us," Lacovara said of the first community event. "(Approximately) 1,600 people showed up."
He also reached out to Rowan administrators to promote the quarry's educational value and to save the site from commercial development.
Rowan bought the 123-acre property for approximately $2 million, and Lacovara became the first dean of its School of Earth and Environment in 2016. He's now the museum's executive director.
"Currently, about 4 acres of the former marl quarry are dedicated to paleontological research and fewer than 300 square meters of it have been fully processed,"a Rowan representative said.
Areas of active research by Rowan faculty and staff are separated from public dig areas.
The quarry already has yielded more than 100,000 fossils from more than 100 extinct species. It was under the ocean when an asteroid strike wiped out most dinosaurs back in the late Cretaceous period, so most fossils have come from marine life including turtles, crocodiles and a mosasaur.
But Rowan researchers have also found fossils from land-dwelling dinosaurs that drifted away from a coastline that was then near modern-day Philadelphia.
The museum is expected to attract families and school groups with dinosaur sculptures, live animal exhibits and interactive displays. It also has a dinosaur-themed playground.
Ric and Jean Edelman, Rowan alumni graduates and philanthropists, donated $25 million to the project.
"There's nothing better for children to get excited about science than the stars and the dinosaurs,' said Ric Edelman, who with his wife has also funded a planetarium on Rowan's Glassboro campus.
General admission ticket prices for the museum are $24 for children ages 3 to 12, and $29 for older visitors. The 75-minute Quarry Dig Experience is $25 with museum admission, or $40 on its own.
'For all the memories we're going to create, it just fills our hearts,' Jean Edelman said.
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Courier-Post. Email: Jwalsh@cpsj.com.
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University opening in Mantua
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