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Southern New Jersey is perhaps best known for its diners, drive-thrus, and turnpikes, but a new project, designed by Ennead Architects with KSS Architects, highlights the region’s more obscure reputation as one of North America's most significant paleontological zones. The area  has yielded groundbreaking fossil discoveries since the 18th century, including the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton, unearthed in Haddonfield in 1858. The Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University, which opened to the public this month, transforms this somewhat unlikely scientific hotspot into a compelling argument for environmental stewardship, anchored by a boxy, timber-clad building that serves as both lens and framework for understanding our place in Earth’s history and role in its precarious future.

Photo © Jeff Goldberg/Esto

Perched on a ridge between a crystal-blue lake and a four-acre marl quarry, the 44,000-square-foot museum is part of a larger 123-acre campus, encircled by walking trails, that also features a dinosaur-themed playground with a Pteranodon climbing structure. Its location in Mantua Township is remote—about a 20-minute drive from Rowan University’s main campus in Glassboro—with the closest landmark being a bustling strip mall across the highway. When viewed from the quarry, the building presents an almost geological expression: its board-formed concrete foundation emerges like an extension of the exposed sedimentary strata below. Several geometrically discrete timber volumes, constructed with glulam columns and beams, rise above the concrete base, creating a distinctive silhouette.

"We studied many options, but that particular siting gave us a lot of bang for the buck," says Thomas Wong, design partner at Ennead. "Framing the landscape and creating that interface with nature was important." Strategically placed apertures punctuate the timber facade, creating what Wong describes as a metaphorical "camera obscura" that focuses visitors' attention on the quarry below and creates a dialogue with the larger site. This concept works on multiple levels, as KSS Architects’ Andrew Sniderman notes, with the diminutive apertures allowing the building to have a low window-to-wall ratio, which provided sustainability benefits. “The idea works as metaphor but also on a performance level,” he says, “That's one of the things that makes the project so resonant.”

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A generous outdoor terrace (1) as well as strategically placed windows inside the exhibition (2) overlook the marl quarry (3), where visitors can dig for fossils. Photos © Aislinn Weidele/Ennead (1); Jeff Goldberg/Esto (2); Edelman Fossil Park & Museum (3)

A unique feature of the museum is that visitors can dig in the quarry’s blue-green marl, a sediment formerly used as fertilizer, for remnants from the fifth mass extinction that eliminated the dinosaurs. This hands-on experience, as well as the dialogue between the building’s contrasting materials, links the site’s present to its industrial near-past, while providing tangible insight into the daily lives of the creatures that roamed on this very ground billions of years ago.

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The lobby space (4) and lower level (5) are generously framed with glulam timber beams. Photos © Edelman Fossil Park & Museum (4); Jeff Goldberg/Esto (5)

Inside, visitors encounter the museum through a deliberately understated entrance, which begins a sequential experience through exhibition spaces designed by the firm G&A and guided by the vision of the museum’s founding executive director, Dr. Kenneth Lacovara. The world-renowned paleontologist (who is also a New Jersey native and Rowan University alum) is known for his discovery of a 65-ton Dreadnoughtus skeleton, among other archeological accomplishments that earned him the Explorer’s Club highest honor. “He’s a real-life Indiana Jones,” says Sniderman, “we couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”

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The main exhibition space (6) includes hand-crafted dinosaur models in dynamic poses (7-8). Photos © Jeff Goldberg/Esto (6); Edelman Fossil Park & Museum (7-8)

The exhibition spaces present the Late Cretaceous world in chronological order, moving from terrestrial to marine environments through sound-enriched, immersive design. Life-sized, brightly colored and textured models of dinosaurs, sea creatures, and prehistoric reptiles populate these environments, displayed not as static beings but in dynamic poses that suggest the messy, precarious nature of prehistoric life. The exhibition path culminates in the catastrophic asteroid impact that triggered the final extinction, through a surprisingly heart-wrenching animation. In the final gallery, “The Hall of Extinction and Hope,” large-scale projections and interactive kiosks directly address contemporary environmental threats and spur visitors to climate action. In the basement level, visitors can peer into working collection and conservation facilities, highlighting the importance of ongoing paleontological research.

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The creataceous galleries lead to the Hall of Extinction and Hope (9-10), where visitors can explore current crises and take climate action. On the ground level, working research and conservation facilities (11) are visually open to the public. Photos courtesy G&A/Brett Beyer (9-10); Jeff Goldberg/Esto (11)

The building itself stands as an example of environmental stewardship. Designed to meet the Energy Petal Certification of the Living Building Challenge, the carbon net-zero facility employs a geothermal system with on-site wells and a ground-source heat pump. The structure's massing and orientation utilize passive strategies to minimize heating and cooling loads. Bird-safe glass is used throughout and a considered landscape design that incorporates prehistoric with contemporary plant species further demonstrates how design choices impact ecological systems. The architects also lowered the building’s embodied carbon by 20 percent by replacing Portland cement with slag in the concrete mix. “The concrete here also acts as a thermal mass,” adds Sniderman. “It mitigates the temperature extremes inside.”

In a region more commonly associated with suburban sprawl than sustainable architecture, the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum offers an active meditation on humanity's place in Earth's continuing story. By connecting visitors directly to evidence of past extinctions, the project transforms New Jersey's rich paleontological heritage into a platform for addressing today’s environmental challenges.

Photo © Jeff Goldberg/Esto

Click drawing to enlarge