Edelman Fossil Park

The Jean and Ric Edelman Fossil Park, located in Mantua Township, New Jersey, consists of a 66-million-year-old 6-inch (150 mm) bone bed set into a 65-acre (26 ha) former marl quarry.

[2] Formed at the end of the Cretaceous Period during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, this rich fossil deposit is abundant in marine life which is indicative of the shallow sea that once covered the area that would become Southern New Jersey.

The bedrock of Gloucester County, where Edelman Fossil Park is located, is composed of alternating layers of sand, silt, and clay due to fluctuating sea levels since the Cretaceous.

It was submerged under a shallow sea until the late Pliocene when the ocean receded as the Greenland ice sheet formed 3 million years ago.

Because of marl's formation as the result of decaying plants and algae in soft sediment, it is a great harborer of fossils including numerous invertebrates as well as larger land-dwelling animals whose bodies were swept downstream and laid here to rest.

Guests will be immersed into the world of the Late Cretaceous as it looked in coastal New Jersey alongside both land-dwelling and aquatic creatures fighting for survival.