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Illinois schoolkids get chance to name SIU baby dinosaurs

Posted April 02, 2019 7:00 am

The Associated Press

CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) - Geologists at Southern Illinois University are asking Illinois elementary and high school students to name its three baby dinosaurs.

The university has three protoceratops hatchling casts in a glass case along with an adult that SIU students named Nanu in 2017. The four dinosaurs are high-end reproductions of real 70 million-year-old fossils found in Mongolia. Professor Ken Anderson tells The (Carbondale) Southern Illinoisan that the dinosaurs are painstakingly accurate down to "grains of sand that are stuck on them."

Anderson says SIU will contact schools around Illinois to invite classrooms to submit names for the three hatchlings. Teachers will be encouraged to plan curriculum around the activity. The deadline is Sept. 13. SIU geology faculty will pick finalists and SIU students will choose the winning set of three names.

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Information from: Southern Illinoisan, http://www.southernillinoisan.com

In this March 26, 2019 photo, Ken Anderson, professor of geology at SIU, views the reproductions of a protoceratops adult and hatchlings, made from casts of the original bones, at the Parkinson Laboratory Building lobby at the SIU dinosaurs in Carbondale, Ill. Geologists at Southern Illinois University are asking Illinois elementary and high school students to name its three baby dinosaurs. (Byron Hetzler/The Southern Illinoisan via AP) The Associated Press

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