BEATING THE BULLDOZER: SALVAGE PALEONTOLOGY IN NEW JERSEY

The rapid pace of development in New Jersey has caused the appearance of temporary outcrops in areas that would otherwise be covered by soil or vegetation, and the opportunity to collect and study these fossiliferous exposures is usually limited. Every situation is different, and methods must be adapted to the specific occasion. We report here on the Marlboro Manse site, a development excavation in the Upper Cretaceous deposits of Monmouth County, NJ. As a result of housing development construction we had the opportunity to perform taphonomic studies of a fossiliferous horizon in the Campanian Mount Laurel Formation, normally only seen in limited vertical streambank exposures. Ten meter-square grids were laid out and mapped to determine orientations of fossils, faunal composition, taphonomic maturity of specimens, and microstratigraphy of the fossil bed.

Other examples of salvage paleontology in New Jersey include the Inversand Pit, where continuous active mining creates constant new exposure and fresh fossil specimens. Close cooperation with the pit ownership has resulted in the excavation of numerous specimens from the K/T interval exposed here. At Dell Materials Quarry near Clifton, NJ, earliest Jurassic dinosaur footprints have been removed from a quarry scheduled to be turned into a housing development; the largest of these prints is now on display at the New Jersey State Museum. A new fossil flora has been discovered in the Englishtown Formation at Madison, NJ, in a sand pit also slated for housing development. The Ellisdale Site near Trenton yielded an important and unique Late Cretaceous vertebrate assemblage, and has been preserved as a park. An active volunteer corps of students and amateur collectors is very helpful in these types of operations. Salvage paleontology is important because it produces specimens and data that would not otherwise be available in areas of limited outcrop.