When Dinosaurs Roamed New Jersey - William B. Gallagher

Did you know that
Benjamin Franklin examined the first dinosaur bone in America from
Woodbury, Gloucester County, in 1787--decades before the word dinosaur
was even coined? Or that when the first reasonably complete dinosaur
skeleton in the world was unearthed in Haddonfield, Camden County, in
1858, it was a major scientific breakthrough which forced
paleontologists to completely revise their picture of dinosaur anatomy?
Few people know that New Jersey is the nursery of American vertebrate
paleontology!
When Dinosaurs Roamed New Jersey provides a succinct and
readable history of the geology and paleontology of New Jersey from the
time the region was covered by Cambrian seas, 543 million years ago, to
the Pleistocene Ice Age only 10-15,000 years ago. William Gallagher
tells the stories of professional and amateur fossil hunters, their
discoveries, and their impact on the history of paleontological thought.
He points out places in New Jersey and nearby where specimens
characteristic of each era were found. He shows how fossil evidence
found in the state is helping paleontologists uncover the ecological
interactions and behavior of dinosaurs, and discusses such ongoing
scientific controversies as the reason for the extinction of the
dinosaurs.
From tracking dinosaur footprints across the Newark basin, to
digging for the last dinosaurs in the greensands of South Jersey, to
finding a mushroom in ancient amber in East Brunswick, this book is the
ideal introduction to the Garden State's fossils and prehistory.