New Jersey Fossil Park Offers Window Into Day Dinosaurs Died

Ken Lacovara, a paleontologist who discovered the Dreadnoughtus dinosaur species in 2004, initially dismissed the quarry when he first visited in 2003. He saw it as a convenient spot for his university students to practice fossil digging, but quickly realized it was far more valuable. "The more I saw, the more I learned, the more I realized that now if I lived in Australia or Cape Town, I'd be coming here to do my research," he said. A sediment layer running across the quarry preserves the extinction story, described as the most significant record to date of the days and even hours after the asteroid impact near the Yucatan Peninsula.

According to Lacovara, the asteroid triggered a 10.3 magnitude earthquake that crossed modern-day North America within minutes, followed by a second shock about 15 minutes later. Within the hour, global temperatures rose to a level he compared to a toaster oven or pizza oven. Smaller animals, including pre-human mammalian ancestors, may have burrowed underground to escape the heat, but dinosaurs had no refuge. After ruling Earth for 165 million years, they were functionally extinct within an hour. A 130-foot tsunami then swept dinosaur carcasses out to sea, where they sank to the ocean floor, creating the bonebed Lacovara studies today.

Lacovara said this makes the site "the best window on the planet at that pivotal calamitous moment that wiped out the dinosaurs and really made the modern world as we know it." The Edelman Fossil Park & Museum encourages visitors to dig for fossils themselves. "There's no place that combines a world-class museum with, really, a world-class excavation site," Lacovara said. He also stressed the importance of reflecting on the mass extinction through a climate lens, noting that the five previous mass extinctions were all the result of climate crises. "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," he said. The park offers climate action resources, and its motto reads, "Discover the past, protect the future."

The facility was developed in partnership with Rowan University, according to a correction issued by NPR. Paleontologists have collected fossils in southern New Jersey for over a century, but this site has emerged as a unique window into a pivotal moment in Earth's history.