PRI's Hadrosaur

Hadrosaur model built by Andrew Bovenzi

This model is a life-sized restoration of the dinosaur Velafrons coahuilensis, which lived in northeastern Mexico approximately 73 million years ago.

The model was designed and built by Andrew Bovenzi as a senior art project at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2025-26. Andrew donated the model to the Museum of the Earth in May 2026.

Velafrons was an herbivorous dinosaur, belonging to a group called hadrosaurs, which also includes more familiar dinosaurs such as Edmontosaurus, Parasaurolophus, and Corythosaurus.

Velafrons is known only from fossil bones of a single individual, judged to be a juvenile (this model has been scaled up to estimated adult size).

This diagram shows all of the bones of the only known specimen of Velafrons that were discovered. This is a relatively complete skeleton compared to many dinosaur finds. These fossils were collected between 1992 and 2002 in Coahuila, Mexico, and are now housed in the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Coahuila. Velafrons was described in a scientific paper published in 2007.

Velafrons was a crested, or lambeosaurine, hadrosaur. These dinosaurs all had bony crests on their heads.

The function of these crests has been a paleontological puzzle for more than a century. Most paleontologists think that they acted as visual signals to attract mates or identify members of their own species, much like deer antlers or antelope horns today. Some of the more elaborate crests, however, may also have had other functions, such as amplifying vocalizations.

Skulls of three crested hadrosaurs

Corythosaurus

Lambeosaurus

Parasaurolophus