date back 65 million
years in Earth
Fossil find adds excitement to Freehold Twp. project
Paleontologist Ralph Johnson points out the demarcation between the dinosaur age and the new age that came after it in a rocky formation that runs like a line through a Georgia Road, Freehold Township, excavation site.
Expert believes remains
date back 65 million
years in Earth’s history
By linda denicola
Staff Writer
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP — Paleon-tologist 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."