Velafrons

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-aged Cerro del Pueblo Formation (about 73.5 million years ago), near Rincon Colorado, Coahuila. The type specimen is CPC-59, and the type species is V. coahuilensis.

==History of discovery== thumb|left|Skull of Velafrons Largescale paleontological expeditions of the Cerro del Pueblo Formation in Coahuila began in 1986 with an expedition by the Royal Ontario Museum, which focused on a hadrosaurid bonebed near Presa de San Antonio. Subsequently, Dinamation International Society established multiple quarries around Rincon Colorado, including quarry 7A excavated from 1992 to 2001 where a mostly complete skeleton lacking a skull was found. In 2002, excavations of quarry 7A were restarted by the Utah Museum of Natural History, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology and Museo del Desierto, where a disarticulated skull and partial skeleton was found within a calcareous grey mudstone by Hernández-Rivera. From magnetostratigraphy, the Cerro del Pueblo Formation is around 73.5 million years old, with the skeleton from around above the base of the formation. The skeleton and skull, CPC-59, was described in 2007 by American paleontologist Terry Gates and colleagues as the holotype of the new taxon Velafrons coahuilensis, the first new genus of lambeosaurine from North America in over 70 years. The genus name combines the Spanish word vela and Latin word frons as "sailed forehead" in reference to the cranial crest, while the species name means "from Coahuila".