Arizona has no official state dinosaur, so an 11-year-old proposed one — the Sonorasaurus

A bill in the Arizona Legislature would designate Sonorasaurus as the official state dinosaur.

Why Sonorasaurus? Amateur fossil hunters found the only known specimen in the world in southern Arizona in 1994. It's on display at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.

If Senate Bill 1517 is approved, Sonorasaurus would join other official Arizona state symbols, including the bola tie (official neck wear), the Colt single-action revolver (state firearm), the ringtail (state mammal) and copper (state metal).

About the Sonorasaurus

A University of Arizona geology student discovered what appeared to be bones jutting from the side of a cliff in the Sonoran Desert near Sonoita in the mid '90s. Paleontologist Ron Ratkevich with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum was part of the dig.

Originally, Ratkevich thought that three fossilized bones initially uncovered were the remains of the dinosaur's limbs. Turns out, they were only toes.

“You can drive a car under the rib cage,” he said recently.

Sonorasaurus, so named for its fossils having been found in the Sonoran Desert, was a descendant of the sauropods -- long-necked, four-footed plant eaters, like the brontosaurus.

What makes Sonorasaurus unique is that sauropods were thought to have gone extinct more than 20 million years before this beast's death.

Based on the fossils, Ratkevich estimates Sonorasaurus was tall enough to see into a third-story window, was about 50 feet long and weighed 4,000 pounds.

The skeleton survived largely intact from the Cretaceous period because it apparently was covered soon after death with the silt of an estuary or bay that protected the remains from scavengers.

“It was beautifully preserved,” Ratkevich said. “It is one of a kind.”

Why a 'state dinosaur' now?

An 11-year-old boy made a persuasive argument.

Jax Weldon, a student at Hopi Elementary School in Phoenix's Arcadia neighborhood, wrote to Gov. Doug Ducey to advocate for Sonorasaurus.

Jax was on his weekly dinosaur Google search when he found that California had made Augustynolophus its state dinosaur.

“So I thought, 'Why don’t we have one?'” Jax said. “I did some research, and I came up with the Sonorasaurus.”

Dan Weldon encouraged his son's advocacy.

“The spirit of this is about children and education and sort of living out that dream” Weldon said.

Jax's little sister wasn't expecting much.

"I thought, 'As an 11-year-old, this is probably not going to happen,'" 9-year-old Jewel Weldon said. “But when the letter came in the mail from the governor, I was so surprised and happy.”

Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, moved Jax's proposal forward as primary sponsor of SB1517.

“He knows more about dinosaurs, more than I probably will ever know,” she said, adding that Jax's letter “talked about the fascination that paleontologists have, the tourism, the museum interest that this could raise. He had just a lot of different arguments that he thought up himself about this bill.”

Brophy McGee noted that following SB1517 would be a great way for Jax and other kids to learn more about how a bill becomes a law.

“It’s the kind of bill that you can really teach,” she said.

Dino wars of old

This isn't the first time the Arizona Legislature considered Sonorasaurus as the official state dinosaur. The issue fell away in 1998 when lawmakers couldn't agree.

A 9-year-old boy got the Legislature to take up the issue after making a pitch to a state senator out of Chandler. His pitch was for Dilophosaurus, a fierce carnivore that roamed northern Arizona 200 million years ago.

The suggestion did not agree with lawmakers from southern Arizona, who advocated for the gentler Sonorasaurus. They argued Dilophosaurus, while found on the Navajo Reservation, was not unique to Arizona.

The boy who started it all displayed "a keener sense of compromise than some of the politicians" early on in the debate, as reported in the January 20, 1998, edition of The Arizona Republic.

''I want to have Dilophosaurus, but if I can't have that, I'd like to have both,'' Chris Fathauer was quoted as saying.

Lawmakers came up with a compromise that would give Dilophosaurus and Sonorasaurus equal footing.

But then more controversy was unearthed: It turned out that paleontologists of the University of California-Berkeley took Dilophosaurus fossils from the Navajo Reservation without permission.

The bill eventually died in caucus.

Connecticut has since claimed Dilophosaurus as its own.

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