A 3D printed duckbill dinosaur skull can help us learn what it sounded like

While the roar of powerful Tyrannosaurs rex in Jurassic Park movie franchise is pretty terrifying, it was actually created by Hollywood special effects wizards use the sound of a baby elephant. We don’t really know what types of sounds dinosaurs done, but paleontologists can use fossils to get some ideas.

Now a 3D printed model can be a first step to find out what a duck-billed dinosaur called Parasaurolophus sounded like. Using Parasaurolophus fossils, researcher Hongjun Lin from New York University created a model of the extinct giant’s signature main weapon. Linen is will present the model Nov. 21 at the 187th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

(Family: Dinosaurs may have cooed, not roared.)

Parasaurolophus was a herbivorous dinosaur that lived all around 77 to 73 million years ago in present-day North America. This dinosaur is known for a crest on top of headsimilar to one cockatoo or tufted mess. It was alive and about 16 feet long and weighed roughly 6,000 to 8,000 pounds.

“I have been fascinated by giant animals ever since I was a child. I would spend hours reading books, watching movies and imagining what it would be like if dinosaurs were still around today.” Lin said in a statement. “It wasn’t until high school that I realized that the sounds we hear in movies and shows – while fascinating – are completely manufactured using the sounds of modern animals. That’s when I decided to dive deeper and explore how dinosaurs actually may have sounded.”

Using pipes, Lin created a physical installation of the Parasaurolophus weapon. The tubes also represent a mathematical model that can help researchers figure out what happened acoustically inside the crest. The physical model was inspired by resonance chambers – a structure that improves the transfer of energy from a sound sourcelike the string of a guitar. It is suspended by cotton threads and triggered by a small speaker. A microphone was used to collect frequency data.

a 3D printed model of a dinosaur skull — *A 3D printed model of the Parasaurolophus skulls in 1:3 scale to the original fossil. The white model is the nasal passages inside the skull. CREDIT: Hongjun Lin*

Although the model is not a perfect replication of Parasaurolophus, the tubes – nicknamed the “linophone” after Lin – will be a verification of the mathematical framework of what the dinosaur might have sounded like.

“I wanted something simplified and accessible for both modeling and building a physical device,” explained Lin.

(Family: 4 Reasons Dinosaurs Never Really Ruled the Earth.)

The first results indicate that Parasaurolophus weapons were used for resonance. This occurs when an object vibrates after being hit by higher amplitude sound waves, such as when a drummer hits a drum and the instrument and air vibrate to create a loud sound. Modern birds like peacocks and peacocks also have one weapons that produce resonance.

While the mathematical model is still a work in progress, Lin hopes it will also be useful for studying living animals with similar vocal structures. He also plans to make a plug-in available so others can experiment with and even add dinosaur sounds electronic music.

“Once we have a working model, we will move toward using fossil scans,” Lin said. “My ultimate goal is to recreate the sound of Parasaurolophus.”