New Duck-Billed Sail-Headed Dinosaur Found in Mexico - Meet Velafrons

[Judi Lynn]

New Duck-Billed Sail-Headed Dinosaur Found in Mexico - Meet Velafrons
By: Stefan Anitei, Science Editor



72 millions year ago, the Mexican beaches were not roamed by tourists and mariachi, but by dinosaurs. One of them has been described in the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology": a large duck-billed veggie dinosaur with a sail-shaped crest.
Velafrons coahuilensis lived just 7 million years before the dinosaur demise. This species witnessed the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaur world, as the impact took place in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.

"Velafrons was probably a beach bum. Its shoreline home was lush, with rivers flowing into a warm, shallow sea," said palaeontologist Terry Gates of the Utah Museum of Natural History and University of Utah.

"It would have been a beautiful time to have been there - very warm, very Mediterranean-like. But you've got to worry about the tyrannosaurs out there. It is the most complete dinosaur ever discovered in Mexico. The discovery is helping open a window into life in the late Cretaceous Period on the southern tip of western North America," said Scott Sampson, a paleontologist at Utah Museum of Natural History.

The remains of Velafrons were discovered in a rugged, dry area of Coahuila (north-central Mexico). During the late Cretaceous, a large inland sea going from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico split North America in two.

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