Centered around exploration, preservation, and education, the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum invites visitors to explore an active dinosaur fossil quarry and engage directly with natural history. Housed within a highly sustainable building, the museum employs immersive storytelling to cement the connections between past extinction events and our current climate and biodiversity crises.
New Jersey, March 31, 2025—Today, renowned design firms Ennead Architects, KSS Architects and G&A celebrate the opening of the highly-anticipated Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University in Mantua Township, New Jersey. Situated within a 65-acre fossil park, the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum is one of the largest public net zero carbon emissions buildings in New Jersey. The 44,000-square-foot museum features an integrated design with immersive exhibits housed within a highly sustainable building that connects visitors to the amazing story of the site. Surrounded by a network of nature trails that circumscribe a four-acre former marl quarry, where 66-million-year-old marine and terrestrial fossils lie beneath, visitors have the unique opportunity to dig for fossils alongside researchers, uncovering new insights about the events that led to the world’s fifth mass extinction.
The design team for the project is a collaboration between Ennead Architects (Design Architect), led by Design Partner Thomas J. Wong and Management Partner Don Weinreich, together with KSS Architects (Executive Architect), led by Partner Matthew McChesney, along with G&A (Museum Planning & Experience Design), and landscape designers SEED Design/Yaki Miodovnik.
“The design draws from the truly profound nature of this site, unique in the world for its evidence about the calamitous fate of the dinosaurs,” said Thomas J. Wong, AIA, Design Partner at Ennead Architects. “As visitors encounter the rich variety of experiences that the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum has to offer, they gain a greater understanding of the deep past, are shown how that relates to the current state of our planet, and are encouraged to take action to shape a better future for us all.”
"We are proud to partner with Rowan University on this landmark project and of our contributions as Executive Architect," said Matthew McChesney, Partner at KSS Architects. “Edelman Fossil Park & Museum will serve an important role in educating and inspiring children of all ages to create a better shared future. This project is a wonderful example of aligning purpose with place to fully realize a visionary design.”
Michael Lewis, Executive Creative Director at G&A adds, “The experience and exhibits put visitors at the center, allowing them to step into a world where they time travel, explore for fossils, and participate in the research process. Tech invisibly enhances their exploration as they engage in active play and are exposed to climate themes and scientific learning at all levels. Through play and imaginative storytelling, the exhibits foster curiosity that leads to action.”
Park Experience
The site design maximizes the experience for museum-goers, seamlessly integrating nature with the museum and quarry. Upon arrival, visitors are enveloped in the landscape, guided by nature trails to the immersive exhibit and learning experience inside the museum, followed by hands-on fossil discovery in the quarry—a deliberate sequence that transforms participants into real explorers. Visitors are invited to dig for real fossils in the quarry, which is home to thousands of fossils from the Late Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Here, they can engage in exploration alongside researchers working to uncover fossils from the last moments of the dinosaurs.
In addition to participating in the digs and traversing the walking trails, visitors can also enjoy a dinosaur-themed playground, complete with a giant Pteranodon climbing structure. Ennead worked closely with landscape architects SEED Design, intentionally designing the nature park to create a cohesive journey from start to finish, linking indoor and outdoor experiences and unifying the park's various elements.
“The breathtaking, sustainable design of the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum embodies our mission. Its architectural lenses serve as portals to both past and present, symbolizing our commitment to using Earth’s deep-time record to illuminate today’s challenges and inspire a more sustainable future,” said Kenneth Lacovara, Ph.D., Founding Executive Director and Paleontologist.
Museum Experience
Inspired by the idea that the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum is a window through deep time, the museum serves as a lens into the incredible history uncovered at the site today. Nestled gently into the natural setting on a ridge between a lake and the quarry overlook, the building’s wooden clad pavilions are individually shaped around apertures that connect the exciting interior experience to the magnificent evidence that lies within the site. Just as the quarry acts as an opening to the past, the architecture is a metaphorical ‘camera obscura’ linking inside and outside, past and present, now to the future. A promontory and covered porch orient visitors to the adjacent quarry and invite them to embark on their own act of discovery while digging for fossils.
Visitors are treated to a series of immersive, participatory experiences designed by G&A, which transport them to the eve before the asteroid that collided with the earth, causing the fifth mass extinction. In the Cretaceous galleries, visitors travel from land to sea through a sound-enriched, immersive environment that reflects the messy, precarious daily lives of dinosaurs, sea creatures and reptiles, with life-sized models portraying these prehistoric creatures in action.
There is also an exciting all-ages scavenger hunt aided by radio frequency identification devices (RFID), featuring fossil clues hidden throughout the landscape. This adventure culminates in the Extinction and Hope galleries, which spotlight the ongoing threat of a sixth extinction and the climate crisis.
The museum experience is complete with an array of engaging attractions such as full-scale reconstructions of extinct creatures, hands-on learning experiences, live animal attractions, a collections and conservation facility, a virtual reality chamber that transports visitors back to the era of the dinosaurs, a 138-seat theater and event space, and community gathering spaces with connections to the natural world. A café with an outdoor veranda overlooking the quarry offers a peaceful spot for reflection on the natural history and ancient past showcased within the museum.
Designed to inspire action, the museum encourages guests to become stewards of the planet for future generations. Interactive kiosks throughout the museum prompt visitors with pressing climate and biodiversity issues, ensuring they leave with a sense of purpose and responsibility.
Sustainability Program
By exploring a deep-time perspective on our ancient past, the museum empowers communities to take urgent action to protect our planet, ensuring our fate doesn’t mirror that of the dinosaurs. The museum’s design philosophy reflects this ethos of preservation and evolution. Ennead and G&A ensured that the site-specific sustainability program, rooted in place-based design, has minimal environmental impact, creating an educational and explorative space to uncover the mysteries of the past to inform our future.
The high-performance building was designed to meet the Energy Petal Certification of the Living Building Challenge, and is carbon net-zero. The building massing and orientation rely on passive strategies for efficient performance and are designed to maximize visitors’ experiential connection to the site while minimizing the heating and cooling loads inside the building. The commitment to on-site energy production informs the all-electric mechanical systems within the building as well as the design for the site. A geothermal system with on-site wells and a ground-source heat pump provides heating and cooling for the building, drawing from the constant temperature found deep within the earth to condition the interior spaces.
Ennead and KSS incorporated wood structure and cladding, using glulam columns and beams, glue-laminated timber roof decking, as well as wood siding to maximize the use of renewable materials and assist with carbon sequestration. Special attention was paid to wildlife and natural ecology through the use of bird-friendly glass and a landscape design that revives plants, which create habitats for animals that will thrive in the local environment. The planting strategy also preserves the traces of history with species that span time— prehistoric to current day.
Edelman Fossil Park & Museum received the 2025 Green GOOD DESIGN Award, presented by the Chicago Athenaeum's Museum of Architecture and Design, which recognizes projects that represent the world's most important examples of sustainable design.