Animating both mesh and armature in Unity with imported animation from blender

I am trying to import a character that moves by stretching and unstretching itself to its next position, like a kind of worm. I have been trying to apply root motion to the mooving animation, and to do so I added a bone at the center of my character. I now want to animate both the bone (root movement) and the mesh (stretching). The result I have been getting is the being mooving but with no stretching. Also, on import, the animation is separated into Cylinder|animation and Armature|animation .Is there a simple way to animate both child objects simultaneously? or another way to accomplish what I am trying to do without root motion? or root motion without the bone?