[meteorite-list] New Fossil Find Dates Back To 65 Millions Years Ago

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:14:09 2004
Message-ID: <200304301555.IAA03273_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2003/0430/Front_Page/019.html

Fossil find adds excitement to Freehold Twp. project

Expert believes remains date back 65 million years in Earth's history

By linda denicola
News Transcript (New Jersey)
April 30, 2003

FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP - Paleontologist Ralph Johnson was in the right place at
the right time and found what he had been seeking for two years: 65
million-year-old ammonites that had become extinct along with the dinosaurs.

At the time, Johnson was exploring the Manasquan River basin and came upon
the excavation for a new bridge on Georgia Road where he made the surprising
find.

Johnson specializes in the fossils, called ammonites, from the Cretaceous
period which started 135 million years ago and ended 65 million years ago.
Ammonites became extinct along with the dinosaurs. In the rocky walls of the
excavation he found evidence of ancient creatures that had been swimming
around in the Earth's waters millions of years ago.

Johnson explained that the rocky formation that runs like a line through the
excavation is the demarcation line between the dinosaur age and the new age
that came after it.

"In Monmouth County that part of the geology is exposed in very few places.
This is one of the best exposures in a very long time," he said.

Ammonites are internal casts of marine mollusks, mostly clams and snails, he
said. These species are not common in New Jersey. In fact, these particular
ammonites have never been found in New Jersey; they have been found out west
and in the gulf states.

Johnson said he has been working on the paleontology project with the
American Museum of Natural History in New York City for the past two years.

"We happened to be studying the Manasquan River basin. The construction on
the [Georgia Road] bridge [near the entrance to Michael J. Tighe Park] was
exposing exactly the levels we were interested in," he said.

His area of expertise covers three states, from the Raritan River in New
Jersey, through Delaware and into Washington, D.C.

"Neil Landman, an expert in ammonites from the museum, is very interested in
this find. These shells are extinct relatives of squids and octopus,"
Johnson said.

The self-taught paleontologist who has been collecting fossils for 30 years
explained that formation the line represents the exact moment when the
asteroid hit and caused a tidal wave that decimated the dinosaur population.
The bottom part of that line is called the Tinton Formation and above it is
the Horners Town Formation

Landman said he is investigating the contact between the two formations.

Johnson explained that there are thousands of species of ammonites, which
are cephalopods, which once swam in shallow marine seas and became extinct
at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago. They are
important because they can be used to date the rocks, but they can also be
used to correlate the rock formations with other geological formations found
around the world, he said.

Mike Ingram lives on a farm on Georgia Road, right across from Tighe park.
He has lived on the horse farm for 27 years and is excited by the find.
Ingram said he has two samples that were embedded in heavy clay at bottom of
the river. He was told that at that time Freehold was under 300 feet of
water.

"It was before the glaciers formed, so all of the water was still in a
liquid state," he said.

He explained that he has been watching the bridge project every day.

"They had to rip out the old Georgia Road bridge over the Manasquan River,
which had been there forever. I can see a layer of earth where all the
fossils came from. There were two paleontologists there on [April 21]," he
said.

Johnson was one of the paleontologists that Ingram spoke with at the
excavation. A Monmouth County native, he founded the Monmouth Amateur
Paleontologist Society in 1969 and curates the collection which he keeps in
his basement lab in eastern Monmouth County. The bulk of his extensive
collection was found by him over the years, with about 15 percent found by
other members of the society.

His lab is lined with scrupulously organized and labeled glass cases full
of clams and oyster fossils, fish and reptile bones, and some large and
small dinosaur bones. Below the cases are drawers filled with fossils.

Johnson knows exactly where to find each one of them. His collection is
divided up into categories like fossil crabs and worms, mollusks, snails,
clams and oysters, squids and octopus, he said.

He spends about an hour a night in his basement lab. When he finds a fossil
at a dig, he chips it out along with the sandstone around it and brings it
back to his lab where he painstakingly releases the fossil from the rock.
Finally, he brushes on a preservative of Elmer's glue mixed with water.

"This is a really effective preservative," he said.

For the past 10 years, Johnson has been a park ranger at Thompson Park in
the Lincroft section of Middletown.

"The museum considers me a paleontologist even though I don't have a degree
in that field. Basically, this is a labor of love. I learned through reading
and field work," he said.

Actually it is a lifelong love, he said.

"I became interested in dinosaurs when I was about 4 years old after
watching the movie One Million B.C. At around 11 years old, I found my first
fossil in a stream near Allaire State Park. Interestingly, it was a
tributary of the Manasquan River," he added.

Speaking of the Georgia Road find, he said, "Ammonites are the stars of this
site."

He explained that the name comes from ancient Egypt. In the limestone the
Egyptians were quarrying they found a species that looked like a ram's horn.
In Egyptian, they had a god that had a man's body and a goat's head. His
name was Ammon. And "ites" means stone, so translated the name means
Ammon's Stone.

"It was very exciting when I found the first ammonite at the site," he said.
"This is what we've been looking for, for the past two years in Monmouth
County. When the dig is complete, the American Museum of Natural History
will publish a paper on the find in their magazine."
Received on Wed 30 Apr 2003 11:55:39 AM PDT