New Jersey is a fossil hotspot, with answers about the day the dinosaurs died

New Jersey’s newest attraction, the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, has opened to the public in Mantua Township, offering visitors a chance to dig for dinosaur fossils in a site that scientists say holds the most complete record of the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

The park sits on a quarry that was first noticed by paleontologist Ken Lacovara in 2003. Lacovara, who has worked in Egypt, the Gobi Desert, Montana and Patagonia, initially brought his Rowan University students to the site to practice fossil‑excavation techniques. “I was very, very wrong about that,” he said. The site, located behind a Lowe’s and Chick‑fil‑A, has since yielded more than 100,000 fossils representing over 100 species, including evidence of the asteroid impact that triggered the Cretaceous‑Paleogene extinction.

The key to the site’s significance is a sedimentary layer that contains iridium, a metal found in asteroids, and a dense bonebed that preserves the remains of dinosaurs and other animals that died in the immediate aftermath of the Chicxulub impact. Lacovara and his team have argued that the layer captures the sequence of events that followed the asteroid’s arrival near the Yucatán Peninsula: a 10.3‑magnitude earthquake, a second shock 15 minutes later, a rapid rise in global temperatures, a 130‑foot tsunami that swept carcasses into the ocean, and the rapid burial of those remains in sediment. The resulting fossil record provides a “best window on the planet at that pivotal calamitous moment” that led to the modern world, Lacovara said.

The park’s mission is to make the science accessible. Visitors can dig in the quarry’s upper layers, look for fossils, and learn about the geological context that produced the site. The museum houses displays of the fossils, the history of the quarry’s excavation, and educational materials that link the dinosaur extinction to contemporary climate change. “There’s no place that combines a world‑class museum with a world‑class excavation site,” Lacovara said.

Lacovara, who discovered the giant sauropod Dreadnoughtus in 2004, has used the park to emphasize the relevance of paleontology to modern society. He urges adults to consider the extinction as a climate crisis lesson: “We have had five previous mass extinctions, and every one of those, we know now from geology and paleontology, was the result of a climate crisis. If you think about it in terms of that asteroid, well, we are now the asteroid of our age. But we don’t have to be, and it’s not too late to turn the tide.” The park offers climate‑action resources and carries the motto “Discover the past, protect the future.”

The Edelman Fossil Park & Museum was funded through a partnership between Lacovara and Rowan University. The museum’s paleoartist is Gary Staab, who has created sculptures of dinosaurs for the exhibit. The park’s opening is part of a broader trend of public science outreach that seeks to bring the deep‑time record into everyday life.

NPR’s segment on the park was produced by James Delahoussaye, edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour, and written by Fiona Geiran. An earlier version of the story incorrectly stated that Mantua Township helped raise money for the park; the correct information is that Lacovara partnered with Rowan University to fundraise. NPR does not accept money for coverage or interviews.