CEDAR FALLS — People at Southdale Elementary School have always known that Lexie Zaugg is a talented artist.

The fifth-grader’s artwork has earned her honors both in the school and in the community. But, now, the girl’s doodles have captured the attention of the world’s largest search engine — Google.

On Wednesday, representatives from Google visited Southdale to announce that Zaugg was chosen as the Iowa Doodle 4 Google winner.

Her prehistoric doodle is now in the running against 49 others, also created by kindergarten through 12th grade students nationwide, to be featured on the Google website.

More than 114,000 doodles were received from students nationwide.

“I about fainted on the couch,” Zaugg said of the day she learned the news.

Zaugg said she chose the dinosaur design because she has always loved learning about the animals and they fit perfectly with this year’s theme: “If I could travel in time, I’d visit…”

Now it is up to the rest of the connected world to decide who will earn the top honors, which includes a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 computer lab for their school. Zaugg’s design can be voted on at the Doodle 4 Google page.

Their doodle will also appear on the Google home page.

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©2012 Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, Distributed by MCT Information Services