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Hadrosaurus foulkii Becomes
Official State Dinosaur, June, 1991
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Fourth-grade teacher Joyce Berry (above, left) addresses State House. Ad part of the ceremony Gov. James Floria (above, right) signed copies of the dinosaur law.
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In 1988 fourth-grade teacher Joyce Berry launched a project aimed at teaching her students about dinosaurs as well as the function of government. Ms. Berry, of the Strawbridge Elementary School in Haddon Township, New Jersey, guided her students through the process of proposing to the New Jersey legislature that Hadrosaurus foulkii be legally recognized as the official state dinosaur.
"Hadrosaurus Bill" Passed by Legislature
The idea was not a strange one. At the time, nine other state legislatures had legally recognized official state fossils. Two local New Jersey assemblymen -- John A. Rocco and Thomas J. Shusted -- prepared and introduced the Hadrosaurus bill which was ultimately passed by both the Assembly and Senate in May of 1991. From 1988 to that passage in 1991, 97 students from Strawbridge Elementary took part in the ongoing legislative lobbying project.
Governor Signs "Official Dinosaur" Law
On June 13, 1991, with Ms. Berry and her students gathered around him in the rotunda of the State House, Governor Jim Florio signed the following legislation into law:
CHAPTER 161 OF THE LAWS OF NEW JERSEY OF 1991
An Act Designating the Hadrosaurus foulkii as the New Jersey State Dinosaur.
BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. The Legislature finds that:
a. The Hadrosaurus foulkii, the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton to be discovered virtually intact anywhere in the world, was unearthed in October, 1858, in a marl pit in Haddonfield, Camden County, by William Parker Foulke, a member of the prestigious Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
b. This discovery of a 25-foot, eight-ton, duck-billed, herbivorous saurian (or reptile), which stood as high as ten feet at the hips, was so unexpected and unusual that it startled the scientific thinking of the day and led to a revision of many conventional ideas as to the physical structure and life habits of prehistoric reptiles and provided a great stimulus to the study of dinosaurs which, until then, were relatively unknown outside the scientific community.
c. This dinosaur, which lived 70 to 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous period and which was given the name Hadrosaurus foulkii in honor of its discoverer, was the first dinosaur to be displayed for public view, attracting tens of thousands of visitors to the Academy of Natural Sciences where it was on view from the 1870's to the 1940's.
d. The Hadrosaurus foulkii has been recently reinstalled as one of the main features in a permanent exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences.
e. In order to pay recognition to the scientific importance of New Jersey's Hadrosaurus foulkii, it is fitting and appropriate to designate it as the State Dinosaur.
C.52:9AAAAA-1 Designation of State Dinosaur.
2. The Hadrosaurus foulkii is designated as the New Jersey State Dinosaur.
3. This act shall take effect immediately.
Approved June 13, 1991.
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