Fourth graders push for state dinosaur
UCON, Idaho (KIFI) – A fourth grade class at Ucon Elementary School is looking to go down in history for helping Idaho adopt a state dinosaur.
Only 16 states have adopted a state dinosaur, and these students hope Idaho could be the seventeenth.
"The state has all kinds of symbols like a vegetable, an insect and horse, and we're hoping they will adopt a new symbol," says Joel Walton, the fourth grade teacher at Ucon Elementary.
But they just didn't know which dinosaur would fit for Idaho, so they reached out to Idaho State University and asked if they had a preference. Walton says, "Oh, they had a preference. They knew exactly which dinosaur they would choose to be our state symbol if we had one."
L.J. Krumenacker, a Research Affiliate at the Idaho Museum of Natural History, says, "Oryctodromeus is only found in Idaho and Southwestern-most Montana. The reason we want to do it as our state dinosaur is it's the best known dinosaur in Idaho. It's a happy little dinosaur that took care of its' kids." He was part of the discovery of the Oryctodromeus.
The Oryctodromeus is known as "the digging runner" because they would burrow underground.
Walton's class has learned a lot about the dinosaur and think it would be a perfect symbol for Idaho. Lillian Randall, one of Walton's students says, "It's the size of a golden retriever." Jett Searle, another student, says, "They're the only borrowing dinosaurs in history."
Last year, Walton's class started the effort writing letters to Sen. Kevin Cook. He is now preparing to introduce a bill to forward the class' efforts to adopt the Oryctodromeus as Idaho's state dinosaur.
“Our Idaho history book, that every fourth grader goes through starts with state's symbols... and sometimes it will say, ‘and in 1984, the Greenwood Elementary class wrote to the Legislature and suggested the potato being our state vegetable,’ and we thought well, if they can do it, we can do it,” Walton said.
After speaking with Idaho's Director of Commerce, Director of Tourism, Senators and Representatives, Walton thinks we will start seeing the Oryctodromeus acknowledged as our state dinosaur as soon as sometime this year.
