The Proposal

The Sauropod Proposal

Anyone can submit a proposal for an emoji character, but the proposal needs to have all the right information for it to have a chance of being accepted. Here are some examples from the sauropod proposal, one of two dinosaur documents the UTC received.

The selection factors for inclusion are amongst others compatibility, image distinctiveness, completeness and expected usage level. To get a sense of the popularity of animal hashtag on Instagram I collected the number of times an animal emoji was used as an hashtag. Therefore I used the official name of the emoji (e.g., »Tropical Fish«). With this method, all animals with emoji named like »Wolf Face« are underrepresented since there are way more pictures tagged with »wolf« than with »wolf face«.

Aside from these edge cases we still get a pretty clear picture: The hashtag »Dinosaur« is more popular than many other well known emoji like »ram« »octopus«, »rat«, »dolphin«, »snail«, »scorpion«, »whale«, »koala«, »crocodile« and many more.

Also the Google search volume (image search, global) for »dinosaur« is constantly higher than other emoji animal with comparable Instagram usage (see above).

Persistence

Another criterion for the UTC is persistence. And this makes total sense, you don't want a keyboard with thousands of emoji nobody uses (anymore). But what about dinosaurs, are they just a short-living trend?

Of course not, but let the sources speak for themselves. Dinosaurs have been popular since they were first discovered; there’s no decline in popularity to expect:

The Guardian: Why dinosaurs are important

»Either way, though, their enduring popularity makes them a key part of the arsenal of the science educator.«

Wikipedia: Cultural depictions of dinosaurs

»Dinosaurs began appearing in films soon after the introduction of cinema, the first being the good-natured animated Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914.«

The Guardian: Dinomania: the story of our obsession with dinosaurs

»They [already, note from the author of this document] made the Victorians shudder.«