In films and television documentaries, dinosaurs often roar like lions. But in fact, there is no evidence to suggest that they made such noises. On the contrary, the existing evidence suggests they didn’t, for a couple of reasons.
First, a lion’sroar is made possible bythe big cat’svocal cords: folds of tissue in theirthroats. We also have vocal cords, as do many animals, but those of lions are fine-tuned to make loud and intense noises, and there’s no direct fossil evidencethatdinosaurs had these same structures.
Second, dinosaurs were the ancestors of birds, so it’s likely some made more bird-like noises. One 2016 study argued that some dinosaurs made closed-mouth vocalisations like the ‘booms’ostrichesmake. Modern-day birdshave avoice box, called a syrinx, that allows them tochirp. A syrinx was recently found fossilised in a bird that lived in the Cretaceous, raising the possibility that some non-bird dinosaurs had syrinxes too.
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Asked by: Steven Riley, Aberdeen
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