Tyrannosaurus roared worse than a lion: new research shows what dinosaurs sounded like

The largest of the ancient reptiles was able to communicate with

The myth that the Tyrannosaurus rex roared like a lion arose after the release of the film Jurassic Park. But dinosaurs weren’t mammals, so they probably didn’t sound quite right. Most likely they had sound amplifiers on their heads.

Researchers know little about how dinosaurs communicated with each other or what they sounded like. When paleontologists find dinosaur fossils, they are just skeletal imprints. They don’t tell us anything about the body’s muscles or what they looked like.

“The sound is not saved. Many of the sounds that animals make are related to their behavior, about which we know very little,” Anette Hegström, a paleontologist from the University of Tromsø, tells Sciencenorway.

For example, the dinosaur Microraptor was the size of a crow. Researchers believe it had feathers and could glide down from trees. And the huge dinosaur Patagotitan could reach almost 40 meters in length.

“We have a better understanding of the sounds made by duck-billed dinosaurs such as Parasaurolophus. These dinosaurs had a long crest on their head that housed air tubes that functioned as a sound amplifier. Researchers discovered intact skulls of these creatures and reconstructed them. The air tubes work similarly to a trombone, producing a range of sounds,” Hogström explains. But there are some dinosaur sounds that scientists know even more about.

Aubrey Jane Roberts works as a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum and notes that researchers have found fossils that stand out from other dinosaurs. She explains what the armored dinosaur Pinacosaurus sounded like. This is due to the fact that researchers discovered preserved parts of the lizard’s larynx. Scientists compared the find with other parts of the respiratory system of modern birds and crocodiles.

“The larynx of Pinacosaurus was likely capable of producing a wide range of sounds: purrs, grunts, roars and even chirps,” Roberts said.

Experts believe that lizards could also communicate using flowers. Annette Hogström compares dinosaurs to other reptiles that communicate in this way.

“We know that some dinosaurs had feathers, and many of them were brightly colored. These feathers could be used to transmit signals both within their group and to other people outside of it,” she says.

Although researchers are still not entirely sure what T. rex sounded, they have developed a sound that they believe is accurate. By combining the sounds of animals they consider similar, they produced waves so deep that the researchers believe they could be felt rather than just heard.

“American scientists used what we know about the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton and compared it with the skeletons of crocodiles and birds. Using the sounds of the Chinese alligator and the Eurasian bittern, they came up with the “voice” of the Tyrannosaurus rex. While it’s probably not a “real” sound, it’s probably closer than what you might hear in Jurassic Park, she explains.