Two Days: Dinosaurs roam all over New Jersey this weekend

NewJersey.com: Two Days: Dinosaurs roam all over New Jersey this weekend


Dino day

These large, powerful creatures roamed the Earth 245 million years ago -- and now are nowhere to be found. Discover the power of natural disasters, how they can cause the extinction of a species, and what kind of damage they can cause in our world at Dino Day tomorrow at the Newark Museum.

You can view life-size animatronic dinosaurs from Dinomotion, but be careful -- they might attack. Explore the tent and planetarium to learn how the giant land mass known as Pangea broke apart, how fossils form and watch the "Dinosaur Prophecy" showing at noon, and 2 and 4 p.m. in the planetarium.

The museum's Dino Day, in partnership with Rutgers Newark, runs from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Dino Day is free with suggested museum admission of $10 for adults and $6 for seniors, children and students. The planetarium is $5 for adults and $3 for children younger than 12, seniors and college students. The museum is at 49 Washington St. in Newark. Call (973) 596-6550 or visit newarkmuseum.org.
-- Meredith Galante

Finding fossils

Dig deeper in the dinosaur pit and try to find fossils. Today you are a paleontologist at Morris Museum's Dino Day in its new Digging Dinosaurs exhibition.

"The coolest thing about this is dinosaurs roamed New Jersey. The hadrosaurus, he was here," says Katie Caljean, the museum's education coordinator. "Dinosaurs are something magical. You don't see them every day -- yes, they are popular in films and movies, but dinosaurs exist in our imagination and we get to use the science and that imagination to figure out what they were like."

When you're done exploring, touch a real hadrosaur egg, marvel at dinosaur dung, hear stories from Dinoman and play "feed the T-Rex."


Alexandra Pais/For The Star-LedgerA skull cast of a Tyrannosaurus Rex at the Digging Dinosaurs, a new permanent exhibition with interactive stations at the Morris Museum in Morristown.
Dino Day runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Those who arrive before 1 p.m. will receive a Dino Day souvenir for each child younger than 10. $7 for children, and $10 for adults. The museum is at 6 Normandy Heights Road in Morris Township. Call (973) 971-3720 or visit morrismuseum.org.
-- Meredith Galante

Time machine
Travel back to a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the Geological Time Machine today in Geology Hall at Rutgers Day.

Dinosaurs, fossils, mastodons and minerals can all be found in the geology museum, giving you a look at what life was like before humans inhabited the Earth.

Parking, shuttles and admission are free. Geology Hall is at 83 Somerset St., New Brunswick. Call (732) 445-4636 or visit rutgersday.rutgers.edu.

State's dinosaur
The New Jersey state dinosaur is the Hadrosaurus foulkii.

It's the world's first complete dinosaur skeleton -- discovered in Haddonfield, Camden County.

William Parker Foulke, a scientist, was vacationing in Haddonfield when a local farmer told him bones had been found in his field 20 years earlier. With the help of a team of miners, Foulke dug around a marl pit and discovered the skeleton of a 25-foot-long, 8-ton hadrosaurus that lived about 70 million years ago, in the Cretaceous Age.
The dinosaur was named Hadrosaurus foulkii, after its discoverer; in 1991, it was named the state dinosaur.

Haddonfield is proud of its place in dinosaur history. A plaque marking the excavation site is on Maple Avenue, while John Giannotti's sculpture of Hadrosaurus foulkii is on Lantern Lane in downtown Haddonfield. For information, visit hadrosaurus.com or historiccamdencountycom.
- Peter Genovese

The largest dino
The group of long-necked, long-tailed, plant-eating dinosaurs known as sauropods -- they of the miniscule gray matter -- are the focus of an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The World's Largest Dinosaurs, " an exhibit about sauropods, is photographed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In one section of the exhibit, the huge hind leg bones of a Supersaurus vivianae are compared to the bones of a human skeleton and other animals, including a Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), pictured here.

It's called "The World's Largest Dinosaurs" and it's a must-stop for dinosaur devotees. A replica of Argentinosaurus, with beady yellow eyes, greets visitors at the entrance. A 60-foot-long, 11-foot-high model of Mamenchisaurus, another sauropod, is the exhibit's centerpiece. There's a 60-foot-long mural of more dinosaurs, and a telephone-pole-like leg of a supersaurus, discovered in Colorado in 1972.

And kids can dig for dinosaur "fossils" in a dig pit.
When you leave the exhibit, it's not the end of your dinosaur day. Just around the corner is the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing, with more dinosaurs, including T-Rex.
The museum is at Central Park West and 79th Street; call (212) 769-5100 or visit amnh.org.
- Peter Genovese

Bones galore
William Parker Foulke, the scientist who helped unearth Hadrosaurus foulkii in Haddonfield in 1858, was a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Joseph Leidy, a curator at the academy, studied the bones and realized that the skeleton's relatively short, slender front legs meant dinosaurs likely walked on their hind legs, as opposed to the conventional wisdom of the time, that dinosaurs moved along on their bellies like other lizards.

Leidy and artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins assembled the skeleton and mounted it at the academy in 1868. It was the first mounted skeleton in the world and the first dinosaur on display in a public museum, and it spawned a craze for all things -saurus.

The full skeleton is no longer on display, but casts of some of the bones found in Haddonfield can be viewed, along fossils from 30 other species of dinosaurs, including a full, 42-foot long T-Rex and the 8-inch claw of a Dryptosaurus aquilunguis.

The academy is at 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway; call (215) 299-1000 or visit ansp.org.
- Vicki Hyman

Car-part-asaurus
Stella is no ordinary Stegosaurus -- she's got style. An almost life-size sculpture by Farmingdale-based artist Jim Gary, Stella wears bright pinks and purples and is assembled out of discarded car parts. Visit her at the Monmouth Museum on the Brookdale Community College Campus, 765 Newman Springs Road in Lincroft. The museum is open today from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and tomorrow from 1 to 5 p.m. $7 (free for children younger than 2); call (732) 747-2266 or visit monmouthmuseum.org.