In this little stream bed, an hour outside of New York City by car along the Garden State Parkway, there are dinosaurs in the mud.

Cindy and I spent a day with a guy named Ralph Johnson, of the Monmouth Amateur Paleontological Society. We first met Ralph this summer during a dig in Bighorn Basin, through an Experiment project that’s been running for two years through the New Jersey State Museum.

Cindy and I consider ourselves ‘normal’ scientists, but we’ve both always been fascinated with paleontology. Mainly because paleontologists are a special kind of crazy, and because there’s so much about paleo that we personally do not understand. Because of this, we always jump at the chance to get hands-on with some real fossil digging. Click here to see some pictures of our first ever Bighorn Basin Dig.

When we first met Ralph, he showed us how to prospect for new bones in Wyoming. Somehow after the trip, Cindy and Ralph stayed in touch and he promised to show us around the local fossil sites. Cindy and Ralph coordinated on a date, and I got to tag along.

It was late summer and foggy, and in the morning we took a train out towards Asbury Park in north Monmouth County.

*Not at that precise place, but somewhere around there

After getting off the train, we met Ralph somewhere near Little Silver and headed towards his house. Ralph was one of the original founding members of the Monmouth Amateur Paleo Society (M.A.P.S.), a volunteer organization that leads dig trips and manages a huge collection of fossils that’s been gathered by amateur paleontologists over decades.

Ralph’s also got several decades of caving, geology, and paleontology experience. Oftentimes, other academics and scientists will call him up to get advice when it comes to certain species, like in this paper about Mosasaurus, the giant carnivorous swimming lizard that featured in the recent Jurassic Park movie.