Can I have the brontosaurus instead?

True it is that headline dialects vary, based on register, technology, time, place and what-have-you. Swim at your own risk, kids; try a claim quote among the knowledgeable and you risk being cast as the sort of miscreant who put an American robin at the Banks house in "Mary Poppins."

While "(source):" is a pretty standard American way of putting the attribution at the front of the headline without wasting space on a verb, there's less agreement on how, if at all, to put the attribution at the end without a verb. I've known places where the rule was colon at the beginning, dash at the end:

Officials: Kane caught in love nest with 'singer'
Kane caught in love nest with 'singer' -- officials

But perhaps we can generally agree that the colon attribution at the end of a headline runs the risk of being mistaken for some of the other things colons do, like renaming or expanding on a noun in the first part of the hed. It's clearer inside ("Georgia child finds $40G of meth in box of Legos: officials"), but when I stumble across "Child's dangerous find in box of Legos: officials," all I can think is: damn, I was hoping for the plastic brontosaurus.