One or more of the bergs could have melted after hitting the ocean floor off New Jersey, Farrell said. Today, the rocks sit in more than 200 feet of water. At the end of the last ice age, however, the sea level was much lower and New Jersey's coastline stuck out 30 to 40 miles farther than it does today. The expedition's members hope to retrieve rocks to determine if they are typical of granite found in New England or were scraped during glacial movements. If so, Farrell could provide a more complete picture of the climatic conditions that existed in New Jersey at the end of the last ice age.
Many scientists agree that much of South Jersey at the time had a barren, tundra-like landscape.
The new research could demonstrate that icebergs also bounced into New Jersey or places farther south, much like they still do in more northern climes. At the same time, Farrell hasn't completely ruled out that the rocks may have been put there by man at some point in the past, perhaps released as ship ballast or as part of a construction project. But there is no record of this, and the ridge doesn't show up on nautical maps, he said. If the rocks are as big as they're purported to be, there is little chance that the ancient Delaware or Hudson rivers carried them to their current position, said Farrell, a marine geologist who has studied glaciers and sea level change in Alaska, Maine and Newfoundland, Canada. Farrell learned about the rocks about six months ago from Mark Demitroff, an Atlantic County naturalist and amateur geologist.