PHEONIX – Jax Weldon, 11, is a dinosaur expert who can tell you everything there is to know about the prehistoric animals.
“I want to be a paleontologist,” he said. “I’ve been obsessed with dinosaurs ever since I was two.”
Jax can tell which dinosaurs called Arizona home thousands of years ago like the Sonorasaurus.
“The Sonorasaurus was 27 feet and 49 feet long,” he said. “It was a brachiosaurus, sauropod, which means it had longer front legs than back legs. It had a long neck so it could get higher vegetation which there was more abundant food sources because nothing else could reach it.”
While doing research, the fifth grader stumbled across a news article.
“It popped up that California had gotten a new state dinosaur,” he said, “and so I thought why don’t we have one?”
Jax wrote a well-crafted letter to Gov. Doug Ducey proposing to change that and heard back.
“He said that he wanted to meet with us so we went down to the State Capitol,” he said.
Sen. Kate Brophy McGee backed legislation and Jax presented for ten minutes in front of leaders in the senate and then again in the House.
“There was a bunch of them and they were all staring at me,” he said.
Both chambers passed his proposal. What started in October as a simple request turned into a fixture of Arizona’s history.
“I didn’t expect to get this to happen,” Jax said. “I didn’t think it would get this far.”