Most people have the notion that Dinosaurs made blood-curdling cries while they hunted or moved around. Most of these notions must have been formed after watching films like Jurassic Park. However, recent research hints that Dinosaurs did not roar.
Dinosaurs also did not sing like modern birds, and this was confirmed after the discovery of the oldest known vocal organ of a bird in an Antarctic Fossil. The fossil happened to be a relative of ducks and geese which lived more than 66 million years ago.
Birds have larynx or the vocal cord which is used to produce sounds. However, dinosaurs had a primitive form of vocal organs called syrinx. The discovery of the Mesozoic era vocal organs –not seen in the older non-avian forms of dinosaurs suggests that the organ must have evolved much later during the evolution of birds. It confirms that older dinosaurs did not roar or make sounds like modern day birds. It must be remembered that modern-day birds have evolved from dinosaurs.
No such organ could be seen in any non-Avian or flightless Dinosaurs or crocodile relatives. Therefore in all possibility, the dinosaurs croaked or clucked like crocodiles. It also gives us an understanding of the evolution of birds and how the Dinosaurs sounded. Syrinx is composed of thick cartilage rings which supported soft tissues and vibrated to produce a complex sound which we hear by modern day birds.
“The high mineral content in syrinx allowed for fossilisation and most of this fossilised syrinx occurred in birds which lived well after the extinction of flightless dinosaurs. The latest discovery was found in a fossil of Vegavis Miami, a bird that lived during the Cretaceous era. It was discovered by a group of Argentinean Arctic Institute researchers on Vega Island in 1992.”
