The Sounds of a Jurassic Forest

Publication Info:

Transcript:

Jun-Jie Gu et al, Reconstruction of an extinct soundscape reveals ultrasonic communication in the Jurassic, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2615107123

Have you ever wondered what Jurassic forests sounded like? Well, thanks to some new research paleontologists may now know! By analyzing 20 specimens from nine different species of cricket and Katie did relatives from inner Mongolia, researchers have created an ancient forest soundscape.

Episode 333

Notes:

This is the sound of a 165 million-year-old Jurassic forest. And these are the fossilized wings of cricket and katydid relatives that were alive in the Jurassic, specifically 20 fossilized wings from nine different species that were alive in Mongolia. And just like today's soundscapes, these are the animals that probably would have been making up a pretty sizable portion of the sound in nature. And just like today, they use small, almost tooth-like structures on their wings to create sound. For anyone who didn't know, they they don't do it with their mouths. Researchers recently examined these 20 fossils, taking measurements of the ridges and the tooth-like structures to see how they'd sound. They then compared them to their modern counterparts and fed all the data through a machine learning model. And we're able to roughly get the sound of what these prehistoric insects would have sounded like. I'll include some of the audio at the end, but in general, they sounded a lot like modern katydids. They were kind of in that 5 kHz range. But there was one outlier that was literally ultrasonic at 20 kHz. And I know that may not sound super exciting, but it's actually really cool, cuz there's been this idea going around for a while that insects evolved ultrasonic calls to avoid bats. But 165 million years ago, there weren't any bats yet. So, according to these researchers, that idea may not really hold up. As usual, if you want more information, here's the source.