If you walk along the entryway to the new Jean and Ric Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University, there is a huge, 65-foot deep quarry to the right where numerous fossils of sea creatures and the occasional dinosaur swept out into the ocean have been excavated.
During the Fifth Extinction – when an asteroid destroyed 75% of life on Earth 66 million years ago – Mantua was part of that ocean, said the museum’s founding executive director, Dr. Kenneth Lacovara, who has led digs over the past 20 years at what used to be a sand-mining operation.
“A remarkable, 6-foot mosasaur skull was discovered in the lake next to our museum,” he explained. “Although not a dinosaur but a marine reptile, mosasaurs roamed the oceans during the last Cretaceous period alongside their land-dwelling counterparts.”…