Photo of the Palisades cliffs in New Jersey.

New Jersey Earth Science Quick Facts

Page snapshot: New Jersey State Geologic MapFossil; Rock; Mineral; GemHighest and Lowest Elevations; Places to Visit; and Additional Resources.

Image above: The Palisades as viewed from Palisades Interstate Park in New Jersey. The cliffs are a remnant of a magmatic sill that formed during the Triassic and Jurassic rifting that broke apart the supercontinent of Pangaea. Photo by Doug Kerr (Flickr; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license; image cropped and resized).

Geologic Map of New Jersey


Geologic map of New Jersey.

Geologic map of New Jersey showing maximum ages of mappable units. Image by Kiera D. Crowley for the Earth@Home project developed using QGIS and USGS data (public domain) from Fenneman and Johnson (1946) and Horton et al. (2017).

New Jersey State Dinosaur: 

The state dinosaur of New Jersey is Hadrosaurus foulkii. A nearly complete skeleton of this herbivorous dinosaur was discovered in Haddonfield, New Jersey, in the 1830s, and formally described by paleontologist Joseph Leidy in the 1860s. It was the most complete dinosaur skeleton yet discovered in North America at the time, and also became the first skeleton to be mounted on display. Today, the original skeleton is on exhibit at Drexel University's Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


Photo of a mounted cast of the dinosaur Hadrosaurus foulkii in the New Jersey State Museum.

Cast of Hadrosaurus foulkii from the Late Cretaceous Woodbury Formation of Camden County, New Jersey. This cast is on display at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton. Photo by "Famartin" (Wikimedia Commons; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license; image cropped and resized).

New Jersey State Rock: None

New Jersey does not yet have an official state rock.

New Jersey State Mineral: Franklinite

Franklinite is a zinc iron oxide mineral that was first discovered in Franklin, New Jersey. At its Franklin Mine locality, it frequently co-occurs with the minerals willemite, calcite, and zincite, many of which are fluorescent.


Photo of fluorescing mineral crystals under UV light from Franklin, New Jersey.

Mesoproterozoic aged marble from Franklin, New Jersey, fluorescing under UV light. Franklinite (black) crystals appear next to minerals willemite (green) and calcite (orange). Photo by James St. John (Flickr; Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license; image resized).

New Jersey State Gem: None

New Jersey does not yet have an official state gem.

New Jersey's Highest and Lowest Elevations


Topographic map of New Jersey.

Topographic map of New Jersey with physiographic regions and point of highest elevation identified. Topographic data are derived from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM GL3) Global 90m (SRTM_GL3) (Farr, T. G., and M. Kobrick, 2000, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission produces a wealth of data. Eos Trans. AGU, 81:583-583). Image by Kiera D. Crowley for the Earth@Home project.


Highest Elevation: High Point

At 550 meters (1,803 feet) in elevation, High Point, in High Point State Park in northern New Jersey, is the highest point in the state.


Image

Photo by Jason Jenkins (Flickr; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license; image cropped and resized).


Lowest Elevation: Atlantic Coast

New Jersey's lowest points are along its Atlantic coastline, where the shore is at sea level.


Image

Atlantic shoreline at Cape May, New Jersey. Photo by Peter Miller (Flickr; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license).

Places to Visit


New Jersey State Museum

Trenton, New Jersey.


Visit website
Photo of the outside entrance to the New Jersey State Museum.

The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton. Photo by "Famartin" (Wikimedia Commons; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license; image cropped and resized).


The Palisades

Western Hudson River in northeastern New Jersey.


Visit website
Image

View from the top of the Palisades in Palisades Interstate Park, New Jersey. Photo by Leslie Gottlieb (Flickr; Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license; image cropped and resized).


Field Station: Dinosaurs

Leonia, New Jersey.


Visit website
Image

Apatosaurus sauropod dinosaur at Field Station: Dinosaurs in Leonia, New Jersey. Photo by Wally Gobetz (Flickr; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license).

Additional resources


Simple map highlighting the different physiographic regions of the northeastern United States.