a journey 66 million years back in time rowan University has opened its long-awaited fossil park and museum offering visitors a snapshot into the lost world of dinosaurs it sits at top a quarry where more than 100,000 of the fossils on display were unearthed as Ted Goldberg reports paleontologists hope after people learn of New Jerseys prehistoric past they'll do more to preserve its future people are really starting to dig the new Edelman Fossil Park and Museum dino i see dinosaurs what did What kind of dinosaurs did you see today a big one we saw a T-Rex look it was really well done um the dinosaurs are really cool they have nice interactive um you know sites and the discovery center downstairs where we um attended a story time which was really fun the museum is a fascinating place with something for everyone whether they're young and innocent or intrigued by surprisingly violent dinosaur scenes we are taking a different approach here that we're showing you the the gritty underbelly of the dinosaur world with all its tragedies and triumphs paleontologist Kenneth Lacavara is the museum's executive director and lover of massive herbivores they don't want to eat you they just want to kill you and that's what's happening here is a juvenile Acroanthossaurus made the mistake of trying to attack this big planteating dinosaur and is now paying for it with its life lacava admires dinosaurs but he can be brutally honest when he wants to be i don't really understand what made them so successful they don't look particularly fast or tough or big they look like little orurves out there on the landscape tell tell me how you really feel he says during the Cretaceous period more than 60 million years ago New Jersey was mostly underwater we have these sea creatures here sea monsters like the Mosasaurus live out here not dinosaurs your children's books have lied to you about that these are marine lizards if you know what a Komodo dragon is imagine a Komodo dragon that's as long as a bus has paddles for limbs a 6ft jaw dinosaur fossils have been found in New Jersey for more than 150 years they lived elsewhere but the ocean moved their bodies to the Garden State the world's first nearly complete dinosaur was discovered in 1858 right here in southern New Jersey and it's this one called Hydrosaurus it has some evolutionary uh similarities to horses they're herd animals they're making sort of honking noises with that big nose of theirs hydrosaurus had to be careful of this guy a relative of the much more famous T-Rex dryptosaurus is going to be the apex predator of its environment you can see it's it's fast um and it has these 8 inch sickle claws that it would throw into the side of its prey pull them up towards that deadly mouth and if you were captured by a driptosaurus you don't stand much of a chance rowan University broke ground on this museum three and a half years ago and it just opened a few weeks back lacavaris says he first got involved here in 2003 unearthing fossils in this quarry next to the museum i uh raised a little bit of money to rent a corner of the quarry so that we were able to map and excavate methodically and once we started to do that I saw that we had something really important here something that needed to be saved the fossil park opens to the public in May where people can come down get their hands dirty and play paleontologist when you go down there and you find a fossil with your own hands you're seeing something that no human has ever seen before it's a legitimate discovery and that really excites them and that little fossil that they find a clam or a shark tooth that becomes more important to them than all the T-Rexes in all the museums of the world or you can stay clean and see the shark teeth turtle bones and other fossils that others have found and if you had x-ray vision and could look 65 ft beneath our feet right now this is what you would see lacavaris says the goal of the museum is to educate and inspire and maybe have some fun along the way in Manua Township I'm Ted Goldberg n NJ Spotlight News [Music]