Humerus situation in Bay Head

Dog finds ancient fossil on beach

Originally Published in the Coast Star Newspaper on March 13, 2026

SPRING LAKE HEIGHTS — The students of Kerri Cunningham’s second-grade class at Spring Lake Heights Elementary School got the opportunity to see a piece of prehistory up close when 8-year-old Matthew Gregg brought an ancient fossil that his dog found into class for show and tell.

While walking along the beach in Bay Head on Jan. 27, Brick resident and Matthew’s father, Matt Gregg, was surprised when his German shorthaired pointer dog, Charlie Brown, unearthed a strange looking object that resembled a large bone.

Gregg said that recent icy snowstorms left him without many options for walking his rambunctious dog, which led him to start taking the pooch to the beach whenever he needed to run off some energy.

“He’s a dog, he finds things,” Gregg said. “He found this bone and started chewing on it, and I really realized it was something when I took it and felt how heavy it was — it was fossilized.”

Gregg said that he took the bone home, where his 8-year-old son, Matthew, took a liking to it. It just so happened that Matthew was “Star of the Week” at his elementary school, and he brought the bone in for show and tell.

“Everyone thought it was so cool,” Gregg said. “So when we got home, he wanted to know what it was.” Gregg said that he encouraged his son to seek out expert advice, and the two drafted an email enlisting the help of Kenneth Lacovara, founding executive director of the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University in Mantua.

Lacovara, who has a bachelor’s degree in geography and a doctorate in geology, is the founding dean of Rowan’s School of Earth & Environment. He is credited with unearthing some of the largest dinosaurs to ever walk the earth, including the massive 65-ton Dreadnoughtus.

After conversing via email, Gregg and his son brought the fossil to the museum, where it was examined by paleontologists. Gregg said that while the fossil was being examined, museum staff took him and his son on a tour of the facilities where they got to see what fossils were being studied.

Originally, Edelman staff members thought the fossil might be from a Megalonyx, a giant ground sloth that was very common in North America between five and 13 thousand years ago.

After direct examination, they concluded that the bone is most likely a femur from a type of ancient walrus that would have lived around the same time, though there is not enough evidence to say for certain.

The ancient walrus was called Odobenus rosmarus, the same Latin name that modern Arctic walruses are called, as the two would have been largely identical.

“There are a few other walrus species that were bigger or lacked tusks,” paleontologist Zachary Boles said. “Ontocetus emmonsi is another fossil walrus species found along the East Coast, so it could also be that species.”

Gregg said that he suspects it was the very ice storm that brought him to the beach in the first place that caused the fossil to wash up on shore. “During the storm, there were a lot of waves and stuff. I’m assuming this bone was stuck in some substrate for 10 thousand years and got freed up by the storm.”

Boles seconded this theory, saying that the femur is in particularly pristine condition, suggesting that it may have been buried until very recently. Boles said that similar bones and fossils have been found in this area before, but are usually much more worn or broken and are most often found during offshore dredging. Boles suggested that dredging, beach replenishments and the recent storm all could have culminated in the deeply buried bone being freed.

Just a few days after the femur was taken to the museum, Boles said, he was contacted by local fisherman Jeff Hudson who read about it in the news, and was reminded of a fossil he found off the coast of Long Island several years ago. He brought in what was quickly identified as a skull of the same type of prehistoric walrus, and the museum is now considering creating a larger display for such donations.

For now, the bone is on temporary loan at the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, displayed alongside other artifacts. The staff cleaned the fossil to remove salt residue and stabilized it with glue to prevent deterioration.