Page snapshot: New Jersey State Geologic Map; Fossil; Rock; Mineral; Gem; Highest 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Atlantic shoreline at Cape May, New Jersey. Photo by Peter Miller (Flickr; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license).
Places to Visit
The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton. Photo by "Famartin" (Wikimedia Commons; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license; image cropped and resized).
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).
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
Earth@Home resources about New Jersey and nearby states:
- Rocks: Central Lowland, Inland Basin, Appalachians and Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and Exotic Terrane.
- Fossils: Central Lowland, Inland Basin, Appalachians and Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and Exotic Terrane.
- Topography: Central Lowland, Inland Basin, Appalachians and Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and Exotic Terrane.
- Mineral Resources: Central Lowland, Inland Basin, Appalachians and Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and Exotic Terrane.
Earth@Home resources about the northeastern region of the United States: