Palaeontology

What sounds did the dinosaurs really make ?

By T.K. Randall
October 14, 2016 ·  16 comments

Dinosaurs may have sounded more like modern birds. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Frank Vincentz In the Jurassic Park film series, dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex are shown making terrifying roaring sounds, but now according to a new study led by paleontologist Julia Clarke, these prehistoric reptiles may have actually sounded very different in real-life.

To get to the bottom of what the dinosaurs really sounded like, the researchers took a closer look at the voice boxes of their closest living relatives - the birds."Our voice box, just to kind of contextualize it, is made up of cartilaginous support structures from which there are super-squishy soft tissues, what we call vocal folds, that vibrate and produce sound," said Clarke.

"Birds have essentially the same thing, in that they have cartilaginous support structures and these super-squishy vocal folds. But where their voice box is located is deep in the chest where the windpipe branches into two tubes, if you will, that go to the right and left lung."

By comparing the voice boxes of modern birds to that of Vegavis iaai, a prehistoric relative of the goose which lived 66 million years ago, the scientists were able to determine that these early avian ancestors most likely made honking and quacking sounds, rather than roars and screeches.

Source: CBC.ca | Comments (16)

Tags: Dinosaurs