88. Allentown Dolomite (Stromoloites)

Around the corner from  The Gingerbread Castle in Hamburg, NJ you’ll find an extraordinary geological formation featuring ancient stromatolite fossils. Nestled in the middle of a mini-mansion community, like precious eggs guarded by a beige mother python, there’s a super-market-sized mound of gray-blue marble covered with pizza-sized psychedelic swirling circular bacteria fossils. I am kind of glad that the formation is obscured inside a community, because it keeps people from destroying it. Having spent most of my life in New Jersey, I’ve seen what Jersey people can do to something precious and irreplaceable.

Stromatolites in New Jersey are located in Hamburg (Sussex County), featuring 500-million-year-old cyanobacteria fossils in Allentown dolomite. The best-known exposure is in a residential area near the Gingerbread Castle, specifically at coordinates 41.142693, -74.577880, displaying large, swirled, dome-shaped structures.