Il Corythosaurus He lowers his head, carefully arranges his things, then kneels. A controlled, almost polite landing. Then he lets out a sound. Not the roar you expect, but something more subtle: a low conversation, a melodious muttering. Courtney Brown Press the sensor, and a 3D print of the fossilized skull emits a note spanning 70 million years. Hearing dinosaur voices, after all, is a bit like hearing the voice of a neighbor as a child. Only a little further back in time. Okay: VERY far back in time.
The sound that comes out, however, is not what Hollywood has accustomed us to imagine. Dinosaurs, it seems, were more talkers than monsters.And maybe it's time to stop thinking of them as beasts that emit terrifying roars. Thanks to paleoacoustics: I'll tell you more, read on :)
When fossils become tools
Courtney Brown of Southern Methodist University He spent over a decade building what he calls the "Dinosaur Choir": musical instruments made from CT scans of fossil skulls. The project combines paleontology, acoustics, and 3D printing to recreate the voices of dinosaurs, creatures that disappeared 66 million years ago. Recent studies confirm that dinosaurs of the genus Parasaurolophus They used their bony crests as natural resonance chambers.
The operation is simpler than it seems. Brown takes scans of a skull of Corythosaurus, 3D prints nasal cavities and ridges, then adds sensors that detect the movements of the voice. The result isn't a pre-packaged sound, but a voice that responds in real time: louder if you raise your voice, softer if you whisper. It's a bit like playing a flute, if the flute were the skull of a 5-meter-long dinosaur.
The search for New York University, presented at the 187th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, demonstrated that the Parasaurolophus could modulate its sounds through bony ridges, producing frequencies that varied depending on the size of the animal. The team led by Hongjun Lin is developing a software plug-in that will allow you to add dinosaur sounds to music.
The evolution of prehistoric singing
But there's more. A recent discovery in China has brought to light the fossil of Pulaosaurus qinglong, a small herbivorous Jurassic dinosaur with a remarkably preserved fossilized larynx. Chinese scholars have demonstrated and This dinosaur could “chirp” like a modern bird, with high-pitched tones and refined modulations. Proof that the evolution of singing had begun to experience much earlier than we imagined.
The larynx of Pulaosaurus It features cartilaginous structures similar to those of living birds, with the ability to produce complex vibrations. Not the territorial roar of a predator, but something more akin to social conversation. Researchers hypothesize that these sounds served to keep flocks together, signal danger, or signal courtship during the mating season.
Comparisons with modern birds are inevitable: crows and parrots already demonstrate how dinosaur descendants retained sophisticated voices. But what emerges from paleoacoustic reconstructions suggests that their ancestors were even more versatile than we thought.
Dinosaur Voices: Has Hollywood Deceived Us for Thirty Years?
Evidently yes. The roars of Jurassic Park , created by mixing the sounds of elephants, lions and alligators, really have nothing to do with scientific reconstructions. The reconstructed sounds of the Parasaurolophus tubicen They sound more like the sound of a wind instrument than the roar of a predator.
Brown discovered this almost by accident during a trip in 2011, when he first heard the reconstruction of a Parasaurolophus in a New Mexico museum. “The sound was deeply musical,” she says. “I thought dinosaurs were singers, too, because I'm a singer myself. For the first time, I felt truly connected to dinosaurs.”
But why did dinosaurs “sing”? The answer lies in social biology. As a study of prehistoric evolution highlightsHerbivorous dinosaurs lived in complex herds that required sophisticated communication. Resonant crests allowed dinosaurs to broadcast their voices over considerable distances, coordinate movements, and maintain group cohesion during migrations.
Dinosaur Voices: The Future of the Sound Past
Brown's project doesn't stop there. Together with Cezary Gajewski ofUniversity of Alberta, has developed a contactless version of the instruments, which uses motion sensors and cameras to transform gestures into sound. The result is a prehistoric orchestra in which human performers "play" the voices of extinct dinosaurs.
Il Dinosaur Choir won third place at the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech, demonstrating that paleoacoustics can be both scientific rigor and experimental art. Brown plans to open source the 3D printing designs and software, enabling the creation of "dinosaur choirs" around the world.
The idea of expanding the project to other species is already in the pipeline: from nodosaur heavily armored to the large predators of the Cretaceous. Each species with its own anatomical characteristics, each skull with its unique voice.
Ultimately, what emerges from years of paleoacoustic research is a prehistoric soundscape very different from what we imagined. Not the din of primitive monsters, but a complex symphony of voices, calls, and conversations. Dinosaurs weren't mute monsters: they were unwitting musicians who filled the Earth with sound for 165 million years.
And maybe next time you look Jurassic Park , you might wonder how different a movie would have been with singing dinosaurs instead of roaring. Probably less scary, but definitely closer to reality.
