Lawmakers pondering the relevance of a dinosaur leg bone moved a step closer to designating the unique find as Washington state’s official dinosaur on Monday.
A bill to make Suciasaurus rex the state dinosaur passed the House of Representatives for the third time since the Legislature first started considering it in 2019. House bill 1020, which needs Senate approval, would make the dinosaur one of more than 20 official recognized state symbols in Washington, joining the ranks of the state bird, flower, fruit, fish and more.
The dinosaur fossil is believed to be approximately 80 million years old and is the first ever discovered in Washington state.
In April 2012, researchers from Seattle’s Burke Museum made the find while searching the shoreline for fossil ammonites at Sucia Island State Park in the San Juan Islands.
The fossil is a partial left thigh bone that measures 16.7 inches long and 8.7 inches wide. Paleontologists identified it as being from a theropod dinosaur, the group of two-legged, meat-eating dinosaurs that includes Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus rex and modern birds, according to the Burke.
According to the language in the House bill, dinosaurs are not usually found in Washington state “because of its proximity to an active tectonic plate boundary and the high degree of human development.” Suciasaurus rex may have roamed somewhere between Baja California, Mexico, and northern California, and the fossil “traveled to Washington along with a portion of the western edge of North America that was displaced to British Columbia in the Late Cretaceous period.”
The fossil, which is on display at the Burke, made another celebrated move in 2019, when it was the last object to travel from the old Burke Museum to the museum’s new home.
The effort to declare an official state dinosaur began with a fourth-grade class at Elmhurst Elementary School in Parkland, Wash. Students wrote to their representatives, a bill was sponsored by Rep. Melanie Morgan, D-Parkland, and the Legislature first took it up in 2019.
On Monday, Morgan spoke from the House floor in support of the bill.
“This is a DINO-mite piece of legislation,” Morgan said. “This is really about civic engagement from our youth with their state legislature. I ask you for the third time to bring the Suciasaurus rex out of extinction, and vote yes especially for our guests today, the children.”
Along with Washington, D.C., 14 states have official dinosaurs.
Washington does have an official state fossil — the Columbian Mammoth was recognized in 1998. Fossils of the prehistoric elephants were found on the Olympic Peninsula.
The dinosaur designation is not the only legislation currently being considered because of a student-led effort. Students from Ellensburg, Wash., are pushing for an official state cactus in Washington.
