Natural History Museum needs help naming a giant new dinosaur fossil

There’s a new visitor coming to the Natural History Museum of LA County — a giant green 75-foot-long skeleton from the neck of a dinosaur that roamed the earth around 150 million years ago.

There’s only one problem: the poor old dinosaur doesn’t have a name, so the museum is asking the public’s help to find a suitable title for the sauropod.

The museum staff created a poll with five naming options that can be found at tinyurl.com/GreenDinoFossil. The survey only takes one to two minutes to complete and closes at midnight on Thursday, June 20. Here are the options the staff came up with:

• Gnatalie: A nod to pesky gnats that nipped at scientists in the quarry where the bones were found
• Verdi: A derivative of the Latin word for green
• Esme: Short for Esmerelda, which is Spanish for Emerald
• Olive: Olives are green and the olive tree symbolizes peace, joy and strength in many cultures
• Sage: It’s green and an iconic L.A. native plant that is also grown in the museum’s Nature Gardens

The bones were discovered in Utah in 2007 by a crew led by the museum’s chief paleontologist Dr. Luis Chiappe. They are from a heretofore unknown species of sauropod dinosaurs, which used their especially long necks to reach leaves that were out of reach for other herbivores.

The fossil has a rare and distinctive green color due to exposure to the mineral celadonite. The giant neck skeleton has been carefully reformed from hundreds of bones that were buried in an ancient riverbed.

It will be the centerpiece of the museum’s new welcome center NHM Commons, which is slated to open this fall. The $75 million center will greet visitors entering the museum in Exposition Park and feature an outdoor plaza, a theatre and a free exhibition area.

The winning dinosaur name will be announced to the public on June 25.