To try to get what sounded like a dinosaur, Dr. Yoshida also saw the Cretaceous creatures’ evolutionary relatives, including birds and the closest dinosaur relative – the crocodile.
“They cluster the range of sounds that we might expect,” said Victoria Arbor, a paleontologist at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, Canada, who was not involved in the new study.
Crocodile’s vocal repertoire includes deep crackles and hisses. “Assuming that dinosaurs made noises like crocodiles is completely safe,” he said. “That’s the basic anatomy they’ll be working on. Birds then developed additional ways of producing sounds in which they could modulate the sounds coming out of their throats in more subtle ways.”
Birds and reptiles have very different ways of producing sound by using the organs that surround the bronchi and lungs. In the extinct living relatives of crocodiles, the larynx produces sound. Birds have a different organ, called a syrinx, which is located near their lungs to produce sound. They also have another organ, located near their mouth, to modify the sound, which enables some birds to compose complex songs.
