Join David and Will as they explore the paleontologists’ perspective on various topics in life and earth history. Each episode features a main discussion on a topic requested by the listeners, presented as a lighthearted and educational conversation about fossils, evolution, deep time, and more. Before the main discussion, each episode also includes a news segment, covering recent research related to paleontology and evolution. Each episode ends with the answer to a question submitted by subscribers on Patreon. New episodes with new topics every fortnight!
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episode 75: Episode 52 – Sounds of the Past (Fossil Bioacoustics)
What did dinosaurs sound like? How did extinct animals make and use sound? Like most behaviors, noises don’t fossilize, but there is some tantalizing evidence that paleontologists have pulled together about fossil bioacoustics. In this episode, we discuss how pop-culture may have misled us, and how scientists have gathered actual clues from living animals and the fossil record – and have even made scientifically-inspired ancient audios! – to reconstruct the sounds of the past.
In the news: hatchling insects, bird brains, old flowers, and dinosaur noses.
Time markers:
Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00
News: 00:04:00
Main discussion, Part 1: 00:28:30
Main discussion, Part 2: 01:15:00
There are some noises in this episode! The living and reconstructed-fossil sounds we played came from these sources:
Great Bittern (Botaurus stellaris) Roger Charters/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML202485) https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/202485
American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) George B. Reynard/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML163792) https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/163792
Parasaurolophus sound bite by Sandia National Laboratories and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science with Paleontologist Tom Williamson and computer scientist Carl Diegert https://www.sandia.gov/media/dinosaur.htm
Katydid Stridulation from Jun-Jie Gu et al 2012. Wing stridulation in a Jurassic katydid (Insecta, Orthoptera) produced low-pitched musical calls to attract females, PNAS (Open access) https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/02/1118372109
All the other animal noises were just made by us!
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The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome.
More music like this at http://ocremix.org.
Muscial Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/