JULY 12, 2016
by Chuck Bednar
In films such as Jurassic World, predatory dinosaurs are typically shown giving off a fearsome roar before unleashing carnage on their unsuspecting victims, but a new study published online in the journal Evolution indicates that they may have actually sounded quite different.
According to researchers from Midwestern University in Arizona, the University of Texas at Austin, some dinosaurs would have mumbled or cooed with closed mouths, similar to how many modern-day bird species can emit sounds with their beaks shut tightly.
“Looking at the distribution of closed-mouth vocalization in birds that are alive today could tell us how dinosaurs vocalized,” Chad Eliason, a postdoctoral researcher at the UT Austin Jackson School of Geosciences and co-author of the study, explained in a statement Monday.
“Our results show that closed-mouth vocalization has evolved at least 16 times in archosaurs, a group that includes birds, dinosaurs, and crocodiles. Interestingly, only animals with a relatively large body size (about the size of a dove or larger) use closed-mouth vocalization behavior,” he added.
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