Do we know what dinosaurs sounded like?

Thanks to dinosaur fossils, we can accurately guess how these colossal creatures looked. But can we find out what they sounded like?

The T-rex goes tweet!

To find out what sounds dinosaurs made, palaeontologists – scientists who study fossils – look to the living relatives of the extinct giants. These animals include crocodiles, which share a heritage with the prehistoric beasts, or birds, which are descended from carnivorous dinosaurs.

Our planet is home to many different species of birds that make a wide variety of calls, from chirping sparrows and rattling magpies to singing nightingales. As a rule of thumb: the larger the animal, the deeper and lower the sound it makes. Those carnivorous giants probably sounded nothing like our sweet little sparrows!

Nothing but dry bones

So, what sound did they make? It’s difficult to say. That’s mainly because palaeontologists usually only have access to hard tissues like bones. Soft tissues such as the syrinx or larynx – the organs that enable birds to sing and crocodiles to produce sound – rarely survive as fossils.

But twenty years ago, some researchers in Asia discovered the fossilised larynx of an ankylosaurus, a herbivorous dinosaur. They compared the structure of this organ with the larynx of living animals whose calls are known to science, like that of crocodiles.

Answered by Naomi Vreeburg