Scientists Try to Recreate Dinosaur’s Voice

Using a nearly intact fossil skull from a beast that roamed the Earth 75 million years ago, scientists here are trying to recreate the sounds that a duck-billed dinosaur might have made.

It’s the kind of work that sent high-technology, such as computer simulations, bumping up against ancient history. The Parasaurolophus lived close to home--in northwestern New Mexico.

A skull of one of the creatures was dug up in August near Farmington, about 180 miles northwest of Albuquerque.

Based on preliminary calculations, scientists believe that they have pinned down what was probably the primary frequency echoing through Parasaurolophus’ distinctive 4 1/2-foot crest, said Tom Williamson, a paleontologist with the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

And eventually, through computer models, researchers hope to recreate the voice of the Parasaurolophus.

The great beast probably communicated across its swampy environs in a low frequency--below 10 hertz, or 10 vibrations a second--a pitch that is too low for humans to hear, Williamson said.

The skull, which is largely intact but distorted by fossilization, was dug up by Williamson and Robert Sullivan of The State Museum of Pennsylvania.

The skull’s nasal passages looped back and down, much like the brass tubing of a trombone, inside a backward-sweeping crest.

Scientists are working to reconstruct a computer model of the skull because simulations could replace physical tests that would be invasive.

“The benefit is we don’t have to destroy the specimen. We don’t have to cut it in half,” Williamson said.

While the low frequency would have carried over long distances, the creature also might have made secondary higher-frequency sounds, he said.

However, much about the sound made by Parasaurolophus remains a mystery because the reconstruction is incomplete, Williamson said.

“We don’t have the very tip of the snout with the nostrils . . . so we have to reconstruct the shape of that [foot-long] area, what that would be,” he said. “We assume sound would be produced in the throat, below the skull.”

For now, scientists have only a rough calculation and no sounds from the computer recreation they are building.

Williamson and Carl Deigert, a Sandia National Laboratories scientist, eventually hope to use supercomputer simulations--”digital paleontology”--to recreate the voice.

Michael Brett-Surman, a dinosaur specialist with the Smithsonian Institution, said that while the skull may be able to indicate only low-frequency sounds, he believes that the Parasaurolophus also made sounds that would be audible to humans. Higher-frequency sounds probably were needed to communicate with the dinosaurs’ young, he said.