The creators of the movie Jurassic Park used sounds from a baby elephant, alligator, and
tiger combined to bring the dinosaur roar to life.
Audiences loved it, but scientists…
yeah…
Not so much.
terror lizards Dinosaurs have been gone for 65 million years,
so, no human has ever heard one roar.
Never.
In the movies dinosaurs had sustained echoing howls, but in real life?
Nah, bro.
A paper from 2009's Historical Biology attempted to reveal exactly what some of these animals
may have sounded like, and lemme tell you, T-Rex prolly didn't roar… instead the king
of the dinosaurs may have… said, "hisssssss."
Or maybe nothing at all.
First, there is no fossilized evidence of dinosaur voice boxes; voice boxes are made
of flesh so they don't fossilize, and thus we'll probably never know without a shadow
of a doubt what these animals really sounded like.
But paleontologist Phil Senter researched the vocalizations of living dinosaurian relatives
to try and make an educated guess.
66 million years ago, at the end of the Mesozoic era, most dinosaurs went extinct in the K/T
Extinction event.
95 percent of the birds we have today, according to their DNA, evolved from any small dinosaurs
not killed by the K/T event.
10 million years after that, the first shared ancestor of all living modern crocodiles evolved,
and they've remained relatively unchanged ever since.
So by looking at birds and crocodiles, scientists figure, we might find some hint at what dinosaurs
sounded like.
To roar, animals have to have a voice box, and in the case of crocs and birds they come
in different types.
Crocs use a larynx the same kind of organ as you and me.
Birds use a little different organ called a syrinx which generates birdsong.
Dr. Julia Clarke of the University of Texas at Austin, told me in an email, "[the syrinx]
had no precursor organ," it evolved with birds; AFTER dinosaur extinction, and from fossil
evidence we know the larynx did the same.
So because birds and crocs AND their voice boxes evolved after the mass extinction of
dinosaurs, researchers posit their commonly shared ancestor dinosaur, probably couldn't
vocalize at all.
Essentially, we KNOW dinosaurs didn't roar because they didn't evolve voice boxes until
later.
But just because they didn't roar doesn't mean they didn't make noise.
A paper in Anatomical Record points out, many dinosaurs had nasal cavities, mouths and connected
noses.
This connection inside the skull created resonance chambers, which allows animals to create all
sorts of sounds even without a larynx or syrinx.
And literally on top of that, the lambeosaurus and hadrosaurus had massive resonating crests
connected to their breathing tracks, which researchers think could amplify those noises
even further.
We've found fossils of these crests so we can prove it!
Some researchers blew air through them to show they could have produced low-frequency
sounds -- just like modern crocs and some elephants.
So even though they didn't roar, dinosaurs could have drummed, groaned, hissed, gurgled,
clicked, rattled, chirped and chirruped, just like their modern relatives…
Calling out that you're the best at hunting or mating is super important in the animal
world, but calling out your portfolio of photos, books or Kanye gifs/gifs is super important
in the INTERNET world.
What better way to do that then with your own website, and no domain extension will
help you tell your story like a DOT COM or DOT NET domain name.
Because you watch DNews, you can get 15% off Domain Dot Com’s names and web hosting by
using the code DNews when you check out, AND it helps the show -- so thanks!
If you're looking for more dinosaur stuff, you should take a second to watch my OTHER
science show and podcast, TestTube Plus.
On TTP we dive deep into the controversy of the earliest dino discoveries, how some dinosaurs
you know might not be real, the black market of dinosaur fossils and how we might be able
to bring them back.
Does it bother you when hollywood makes up dinosaur stuff?
Like, why didn't the velociraptors have feathers?
Dinosaurs had feathers.
They did.
It's fact.
… Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and please subscribe to DNews so you get all
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