School of Earth & Environment’s Dean Lacovara featured on PBS special “Keeping the Pinelands”

Dr. Kenneth Lacovara, dean of Rowan University’s School of Earth & Environment and executive director of the Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park in Mantua Township, was featured on a PBS special, Keeping the Pinelands, that aired June 28.

The show opened with a shot of the Fossil Park, where a new $75 million museum is under construction, and Lacovara explaining that, during the last days of the dinosaurs, all of the Pine Barrens, including the area now containing the Fossil Park, would have been under water.

During the last Ice Age, which ended nearly 12,000 years ago, a vast glacier swept down into the region that became New Jersey but ended somewhere around New Brunswick, Lacovara said.

“This area, here, was tundra,” Lacovara said. “The Pine Barrens of New Jersey are really this periglacial environment, meaning an area right next to a glacier. It's the kind of land you'd find in Alaska, today, but now it's a more temperate climate and it's been vegetated by the pine forests.”

The show, which includes sweeping aerial views of the Fossil Park, explores the origins, present and future of the Pinelands, America’s first national reserve, with more than 1 million acres.

Watch the special here.