| Velafrons Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 73.5 Ma |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Ornithischia |
| Family: | Hadrosauridae |
| Subfamily: | Lambeosaurinae |
| Genus: | Velafrons Gates et al., 2007 |
| Species | |
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Velafrons (meaning "sailed forehead") is a genus of lambeosaurine hadrosaurid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Mexico. It is known from a mostly complete skull and partial skeleton of a juvenile individual, with a bony crest on the forehead. Its fossils were found in the late Campanian-age Upper Cretaceous Cerro del Pueblo Formation (about 73.5 million years old), near Rincon Colorado, Coahuila, Mexico. The type specimen is CPC-59, and the type species is V. coahuilensis.[1]
Velafrons was most similar to young specimens of Corythosaurus and Hypacrosaurus, and was found to be a corythosaurin in the phylogenetic analysis performed by Gates and colleagues in their description of the genus. The skull was large in comparison to skulls from other genera at a similar growth stage, so the crest may have been small in adults or followed a different growth pattern, or it may be that adult Velafrons were also larger than adults of other lambeosaurine genera. Unusually large size is also seen in the Mexican hadrosaurids Kritosaurus sp. and Lambeosaurus laticaudus.[1] As a hadrosaurid, Velafrons would have been an herbivore.[2]