It may be difficult to imagine North Bergen as a place to collect fossils, but it once was.
According to the American Museum of Natural History, Granton Quarry resided on the back slope of the Palisades Cliffs, between railroad lines and Tonnelle Avenue. Nowadays, a Lowes Home Building Center and Tonnelle Plaza sit on the site.
The quarry, used by a private company to provide stones for roads, contained sediments of “indurate siltstones and sandstones” from the Triassic age.
When it closed more than 50 years ago, it became popular with both amateur and professional geologists and paleontologists.
An unknown amount of fossils, mostly fish, were found there until the quarry was demolished to make way for commercial development.
But 31 years ago, an important find was made by West New York native Steven Stelz, his wife Trini, and friend Jim Leonard.
“The sun was hitting it at just at the right angle and we could see the whole skeleton.” – Steven Stelz
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“This time we found something a little more interesting than fish,” said Stelz in an interview last week. “When we split the rock open, the sun was hitting it at just at the right angle and we could see the whole skeleton.”
Important NJ find
When Stelz, now 52 and living in Flemington, saw the find, he knew it was a reptile of some sort.
That reptile wound up being a 215 million-year-old Tanytrachelos, nicknamed “Tany,” which swam in the rift-valley freshwater lakes that once spanned eastern North America.
“Tany” was alive during the time small dinosaurs began to appear and was one of the first specimens of its type to be found in New Jersey, along with other fossil finds in Virginia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Not only was it rare, but it is believed to be the best skeleton found, with all 128 bones of the reptile depicted.
The group took the fossil to Princeton University, where Professor Donald Baird identified it and suggested they take it to a paleontologist who was studying the species.
On view
A year earlier, Yale University student Paul Olsen had found the first Tanytrachelos fossil while excavating rock in North Carolina. The Granton Quarry fossil was entrusted to his care when he took it to Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. in 1984.
Stelz said that because it was a research museum, the public was not able to view “Tany” without permission.
Recently, Stelz asked Olsen if he would return the fossil to New Jersey so that its residents could observe it and so that local scientists would be able to study it.
Olson agreed and the fossil in now on display at the State Museum in Trenton.
Stelz said that as a child, he donated many of his fossil finds to museums, but because they were for scientific study they were never on view. One of his prerequisites for donating “Tany” was that it would be permanently displayed.
Once a swimming hole
“My dad used to swim back there,” said Stelz of the quarry hole. “It was filled with water when he was a kid. By the time I got down there in 1967, it was all dry. It was just an abandoned quarry where they used to quarry stone for roads.”
Stelz’s obsession first started in fourth grade, when a classmate brought in a fossil and he asked him where he found it.
Living in walking distance from the quarry, Stelz started digging and eventually began to find fish fossils.
“I was so fortunate to have it in my backyard,” said Stelz.
Stelz had his first date with his wife Trini by taking her to Granton, where she gained a love for their treasure hunting.
The quarry had already become famous when the Icarosaurus siefkeri, an early gliding reptile, was found by Alfred Siefker and Michael Bandrowski in 1960.
“Today in New Jersey a lot of these locations are gone,” said Stelz. “The land is so valuable. They build homes and developments on them.”
Tricia Tirella may be reached at TriciaT@hudsonreporter.com.