By TORU SAITO/ Staff Writer
February 16, 2023 at 15:48 JST
An international research team said Feb. 15 it found a fossil of a dinosaur larynx bone, a world-first discovery that could help solve the mystery of what dinosaurs sounded like.
So far, the study indicates dinosaurs were capable of emitting sounds more complicated than the grunts and growls of modern reptiles.
The discovery is “an important step to find how the production of dinosaurs’ sounds evolved, which is still unknown,” team member Junki Yoshida, curator at Fukushima Museum in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, said at a news conference on Feb. 15.
The bone came from a fossilized Pinacosaurus specimen that the American Museum of Natural History unearthed in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia in 2005.
Other members of the research team came from Hokkaido University.
The Pinacosaurus was a four-legged herbivore about 3 to 4 meters long with dermal bones that protected its body like armor.
The team members studied the fossil and found that most of the bones were still connected and in good condition.
They then discovered a laryngeal bone, located at the entrance to the trachea used for breathing or vocalization.
The team compared the fossilized laryngeal bone, which is 7 to 8 centimeters wide, with modern-day reptiles and birds.
The Pinacosaurus bone is similar to those of birds. One common point is a joint between a throat bone and another bone that can be moved by muscle, the researchers said.
The shape of the Pinacosaurus laryngeal bone is suitable for acoustic communications, they said.
It is highly likely the dinosaur could make sounds that were more complicated than monotone noises of reptiles, such as crocodiles, according to the team.
A thesis on the finding was published in the scientific journal Communications Biology.
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This photo shows the head bone of Pinacosaurus photographed from below. The laryngeal bone is located in the lower part. (Provided by the American Museum of Natural History)
