What did the world sound like 150 million years ago, long before birds filled the skies with song? A team of researchers has spent more than a decade trying to answer that question, and they now believe they’ve come close to recreating it.
By studying the fossilized remains of ancient insects—paying close attention to the physical structures they would have used to produce sound, such as wings and specialized body parts—scientists identified nine species that likely made noise during the Jurassic period. Using this anatomical evidence, along with comparisons to modern-day relatives of these insects, the team reconstructed what their calls and chirps may have sounded like.
The result is being described as the first scientifically informed audio reconstruction of a Jurassic soundscape. Instead of silence or generic background noise often used in documentaries and films, this project offers something closer to an educated guess at the actual buzzing, clicking, and droning that might have echoed through prehistoric forests, long before the roars of dinosaurs so often dominate our imagination of that era.
The project underscores how much scientists can learn about extinct ecosystems not just from bones, but from the subtler traces fossils leave behind. To hear the results and learn more about how researchers pieced together this ancient chorus, read the full article in The New York Times.
Source: What Did Jurassic Forests Sound Like? Like This. (rss.nytimes.com). English version produced with AI assistance.
Image: Oregon State University, BY-SA 2.0 (via Openverse).