 The museum 's earliest collections began to coalesce in 1836 through the work of Lewis C. Beck ( 1798 – 1853 ) , a physician , botanist , entomologist , chemist and geologist , who taught at Rutgers in the mid @-@ nineteenth century from 1830 until his death in 1853 . Many of the exhibits feature items that are unique to New Jersey , including Native American artifacts , minerals , and fossils . These exhibits include a set of fossilized dinosaur tracks believed to belong to the carnivorous <unk> , from the Jurassic @-@ period discovered near Towaco in Morris County , and the skeleton of a 10 @,@ 000 @-@ year old mastodon ( Mammut americanum ) discovered in Salem County in 1869 . The mastodon , found in a marl pit near Mannington , was sold by a local farmer to a travelling circus before it was acquired by Rutgers for display . 
