{"id":16497,"date":"2025-03-31T09:31:32","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T09:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/a-new-dinosaur-museum-rises-from-a-hole-in-the-ground-in-new-jersey\/"},"modified":"2025-03-31T09:31:32","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T09:31:32","slug":"a-new-dinosaur-museum-rises-from-a-hole-in-the-ground-in-new-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/a-new-dinosaur-museum-rises-from-a-hole-in-the-ground-in-new-jersey\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Dinosaur Museum Rises From a Hole in the Ground in New Jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ten years ago, this was just a big hole in the ground behind a Lowe\u2019s home improvement store in southern New Jersey, an unlikely place to find what might be one of the world\u2019s most important fossil sites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But 66 million years ago, tantalizingly close in time to when the dinosaurs went extinct, a multitude of sea creatures died here \u2014 a \u201cmass death assemblage\u201d \u2014 and sank to the bottom of what was then a shallow sea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Because of its prehistoric past as a possible mass extinction gravesite, the hole that was once a quarry has become the Edelman Fossil Park &amp; Museum.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Built in Mantua, N.J., about 20 miles from Philadelphia, the museum welcomed its first paying customers this past weekend. For Kenneth Lacovara, a professor of paleontology and geology at nearby Rowan University and the museum\u2019s executive director, it is the culmination of a decade of work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe\u2019re doing so much here that I think has never been done in any museum,\u201d said Dr. Lacovara, best known in paleontology for the discovery of <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/09\/05\/science\/dinosaur-dreadnoughtus-discovery.html\" title=\"\">Dreadnoughtus, one of the largest dinosaurs ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The fossils come with a hard-to-miss message from Dr. Lacovara, one that makes direct connections between the mass extinction 66 million years ago and today\u2019s rapidly changing climate, which is putting many species in danger of dying out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The museum\u2019s motto is \u201cDiscover the past, protect the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThat\u2019s really the thrust of this place,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said. \u201cWe need to act, and we need to act now, and every day of inaction or worse, every day that we go backwards, is a burden that we are placing on future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For decades, the Inversand Company had scooped from the quarry a dark greenish sand called marl, used for the treatment of water and soil. Tightened environmental regulations turned the site into a money loser, and Inversand looked to close it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mantua had hoped that a developer would turn the pit into more suburban homes and shopping. But the Great Recession stalled those plans, and the quarry remained a hole in the ground.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The mining of marl had exposed prehistoric sediments that extend throughout this part of South Jersey, but are typically inconveniently buried more than 40 feet underground.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Lacovara, then at Drexel University in Philadelphia, had started visiting the site, which included a fossil-laden layer that appeared to coincide with the mass extinction 66 million years ago. Fossils of anything that died that day are scant within the extinction layer, because the conditions needed to preserve bones are rare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThis is something that I personally and lots of other paleontologists have been looking for all around the world,\u201d said Dr. Lacovara, adding that he had sought such a layer in southern Patagonia, the foothills of the Himalayas and elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cAnd I found it behind the Lowe\u2019s in New Jersey,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">More than 100,000 fossils representing 100 species have been carefully excavated from the quarry and cataloged.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Until the pandemic, the site opened once a year to the public for a community fossil dig, allowing people to collect fossils from sediments above the mass extinction layer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Rowan University bought the site in 2015 for just under $2 million and lured Dr. Lacovara, who had graduated from the school when it was known as Glassboro State College, to join its faculty as the dean of the new School of Earth and Environment. Rowan also bought into Dr. Lacovara\u2019s vision of building a museum.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThis is going to be a place to motivate young minds to become scientists,\u201d Ali Houshmand, the president of Rowan, said in remarks at the start of the media tour.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Jean and Ric Edelman, founders of a financial advisory firm and also graduates of Glassboro State, contributed $25 million of the $75 million Rowan needed to build it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe immediately recognized that this had the potential to be a world-class destination,\u201d Mr. Edelman said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">There is plenty of what one would expect to find in a dinosaur museum, which overlooks the fossil site in the former quarry. Near the ticket kiosks are skeletons of creatures that lived along the east coast of North America during the Cretaceous period. A mosasaur, a ferocious marine reptile, hangs from the ceiling, and a Dryptosaurus, a relative of T. rex, poses menacingly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The museum highlights how some of the earliest dinosaur discoveries were made in New Jersey. The first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton \u2014 a duck-billed hadrosaur \u2014 was <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1994\/11\/27\/nyregion\/dinosaur-site-is-made-a-landmark.html\" title=\"Times article, Nov. 27, 1994.\">dug up in a quarry<\/a> in Haddonfield in 1858. Dryptosaurus was the first tyrannosaur to be discovered, in 1866, just a mile from the museum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-7\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Visitors walk a winding path through three galleries in the museum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-8\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the first gallery, an introductory movie provides perspective on just how mind-bogglingly old our planet is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">If the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth were a 1,000-page book, the entire 10,000 years of human civilization would be covered by just the last word on the last page. That sense of \u201cdeep time\u201d is meant to set up visitors for an understanding of how unnaturally quickly Earth\u2019s climate is changing now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Life-size re-creations of dinosaurs, big and not so big, fill the gallery. In the warmth of the late Cretaceous, sea levels were much higher and North America was a series of islands. In one, a big, angry plant-eater known as Astrodon stomps a juvenile meat-eater, Acrocanthosaurus, to death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe want to show the gritty underbelly of the dinosaur world,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The next gallery highlights the marine creatures that lived in the seas here, including sea turtles, sharks and saber-toothed salmon. This part of New Jersey was about 70 feet underwater and 15 to 30 miles offshore. \u201cIn this gallery, everything you see here is something that was found on the property,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That includes the fearsome mosasaurs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\"><strong class=\"css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10\">\u201c<\/strong>I would say it\u2019s a statistical near certainty that at some point in time, a mosasaur of this size was at that exact location,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said, pointing to a re-creation of the creature.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-9\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Visitors then enter the Hall of Extinction and Hope. It shows the devastation that enveloped Earth after an asteroid struck the Gulf of Mexico off the Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula, the fifth mass extinction in the planet\u2019s history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Then it turns to the present, which many other scientists describe as the sixth extinction as species struggle to adapt to the changes humans have made to the planet, including the destruction of habitats and global warming spurred by the rise in greenhouse gases released from the burning of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">One interactive exhibit shows the sharp rise in global temperatures over the past few centuries and allows a visitor to compare that curve with possible natural causes like sunspots, volcanic eruptions and cyclical changes in Earth\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cNone of those things explain the temperature variation,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the simultaneous rise of temperature and greenhouse gases are \u201calmost an exact correlation,\u201d he said. \u201cSo at that point, you can draw your own conclusions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He said he wanted people to learn by examining the data themselves. \u201cNot everybody is going to connect the dots,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said, \u201cbut if they\u2019re inclined to, our job is to help.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-10\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At the last station, kiosks offer visitors information about how they can take action to offset climate change. \u201cBecause hope without action is really despair,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said. \u201cYou\u2019re all set up to make a positive change in the world before you walk out the doors of the museum.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">How might this message play in a time when President Trump calls climate change a hoax and his administration is dismantling projects and research aiming to move away from fossil fuels?<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI guess we\u2019ll see when the museum opens,\u201d said Kelly Stoetzel, the managing director who oversees the day-to-day running of the museum. It expects to draw 200,000 visitors a year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-11\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She said she was interested in hearing the reactions of visitors who are skeptical that the planet is undergoing rapid changes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWhen they come in and they learn the science, can they be convinced to consider something different?\u201d Ms. Stoetzel said. \u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For Dr. Lacovara, the message is simple. \u201cYou can\u2019t love what you don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re hoping to make people fall in love with this amazing planet that we have so that they take action to protect it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The museum\u2019s learn-by-doing ethos will allow visitors to become paleontologists for a day. For an extra fee, from May through October, visitors will be able to dig through the quarry sands for fossils that they can take home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The museum also includes fun flourishes. Take the elevator between its two floors, and you\u2019ll hear a snippet of popular singers of the 1950s and 1960s like <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1995\/12\/26\/movies\/dean-martin-pop-crooner-and-comic-actor-dies-at-78.html\" title=\"\">Dean Martin<\/a>, whose given name was Dino. Thus, \u201cdino lounge\u201d music.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-12\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At the entrance is the pronouncement, \u201cThis facility is smoke-free, weapons-free and asteroid free (for the last 66 million years).\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Lacovara is also proud of the glass used for the exterior windows, because it keeps modern-day dinosaurs \u2014 birds \u2014 from <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/bioone.org\/journals\/the-condor\/volume-116\/issue-1\/CONDOR-13-090.1\/Birdbuilding-collisions-in-the-United-States--Estimates-of-annual\/10.1650\/CONDOR-13-090.1.full\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">fatally flying into them<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\"><strong class=\"css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10\">\u201c<\/strong>What I really love about it is, it relies on evolutionary principles,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The eyes of the first vertebrate animals, predating both mammals and dinosaurs, possessed four color receptors \u2014 for red, blue, green and ultraviolet light.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-13\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Birds, which are dinosaurs that survived the mass extinction, still have ultraviolet receptors in their eyes. They see images of spider webs that are imprinted on the museum\u2019s glass, and they safely fly away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-14\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIf you come up and you catch just the right angle, you can kind of see it,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mammals, however, lost the ability to see ultraviolet light, because when they arose more than 200 million years ago, they were small creatures that scurried about at night \u2014 better not to be seen and eaten by the dinosaurs. There is not a lot of ultraviolet light at night, and in mammals, the gene that encodes that receptor in the eye was co-opted by the olfactory system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As a result, mammals tend to have a good sense of taste and smell but cannot see ultraviolet light.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cTo us mammals, this looks like clear glass,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said. \u201cAnd I know this because the forklift truck driver who drove through one of these panes was a mammal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">With the museum now open, Dr. Lacovara hopes to turn his attention toward proving that the mass death assemblage in the quarry pit indeed consists of animals killed in the planet-wide cataclysm that followed the asteroid strike.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That has been hard to settle, however, because creatures burrowing in the sea bottom churned up the sediments. As a result, the marker of the extinction \u2014 a layer containing substantial amounts of iridium, an element concentrated in asteroids and comets \u2014 is fuzzy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s almost like looking through a shower door at something,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He said he had all the data he needed, but work on the museum had not left him time to finish writing the papers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThis has been all-consuming,\u201d Dr. Lacovara said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     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southern<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[5247,5253,324,322,181,5251,5250,5252,402,323,5248,5249,188],"class_list":["post-16497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-dinosaurs","tag-edelman-fossil-park-and-museum","tag-endangered-and-extinct-species","tag-fossils","tag-global-warming","tag-kenneth-j","tag-lacovara","tag-mantua-township-nj","tag-museums","tag-paleontology","tag-quarries","tag-rowan-university","tag-your-feed-science"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A New Dinosaur Museum Rises From a Hole in the Ground in New Jersey - World News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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