380M Year-Old Fossils Ended Up In Landfill, NJ Professor Claims

WAYNE, NJ — A New Jersey professor says a university's failure to pay invoices with UPS resulted in his collection of 380-million-year-old fossils being dumped in a Tennessee landfill.

Dr. Martin Becker, who is an environmental science professor at William Paterson University, filed a lawsuit on March 7 claiming that the mailroom supervisor and the university were negligent in handling a shipment of 200 fossils that he was sending to a colleague.

A William Paterson spokesperson said the university is aware of the lawsuit, but does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Becker, who is also a paleontologist, says he spent 18 years studying fossils from the Devonian period that were unearthed at High Mountain Park Preserve in Wayne. The marine invertebrate fossils that he assembled traveled from upstate New York over a period of several million years, and ended up in Wayne's High Mountain area during the last ice age, according to the lawsuit and a 2019 article from the university.

The Devonian period, sometimes called the "Age of Fishes" because of how many marine species appeared during this time, spans between about 419 and 359 million years ago. For comparison, dinosaurs lived from about 245 to 66 million years ago.

Becker's collection "is the most unique and comprehensive collection of marine fossils reported in Northern New Jersey" and his research had been the subject of multiple conferences, lectures, manuscripts, and grant awards, the lawsuit states. He also shared his research with his students, and as part of an outreach program for K-12 students, the lawsuit states.

Last year, Becker and a colleague decided to create a "comprehensive monograph" of the fossils he assembled, which had never been published before in scientific literature, the lawsuit states. The colleague is in Florida, so Becker packed up about 80 percent of his collection into 19 separate packages and took it to the university mailroom around June 18.

The mailroom supervisor, Raymond Boone, reportedly told Becker he would forward him the tracking numbers and insurance information for the packages — each weighing between 20 and 60 pounds. But it took almost a month for Becker to get that information even after he asked Boone several times, the lawsuit states.

When Becker checked the UPS tracking website on Aug. 16, it said that the packages were in Parsippany waiting to be delivered, per the lawsuit.

By Aug. 30, Becker's Florida colleague still did not have the fossils. The professor continued contacting Boone, who said he was "working on the issue," and eventually told Becker the fossil packages could be in the UPS fraud department.

When Becker contacted UPS several later, he was informed that the shipping company had seized the packages because William Paterson failed to pay invoices and their account had been canceled, the lawsuit states. UPS had canceled the account in April 2024 and sent "several notices" to both Boone and the university, according to the lawsuit.

Becker learned that the packages "were dumped at an unidentified landfill somewhere in or around Nashville, Tennessee."

Becker is suing for damages and medical expenses caused by the emotional distress of "the destruction of his life's work." He also claims the university was negligent in supervising Boone, and that the defendants should not have shipped the fossils if they knew William Paterson's contract with UPS was canceled.

He is represented by Albert J. Seibert of the Law Offices of Steven A. Varano in Little Falls.