This dinosaur might have chirped like a bird
They have discovered a dinosaur that may have chirped like a bird, a finding that suggests the evolutionary origins of bird song may be millions of years older than previously thought.
In a study published last week in , an international team of researchers describes a 163-million-year-old fossil found in Hebei province, China. The fossil dinosaur, named Pulaosaurus qinqlong, measures only 72 centimeters and is almost complete, giving scientists a detailed look at its anatomy, including a neck surprisingly similar to that of birds.
An anatomical link between reptiles and modern birds
In vertebrates, vocal organs protect the airways and allow for the production of sounds like basic noises including grunts, groans, and whistles. In almost all living reptiles, the structures are made of cartilage and relatively simple. But birds have delicate, flexible vocal organs made of bone that can produce more complex and diverse sounds.
The throat of the Pulaosauarus seems to be somewhere in between these two variables. Its vocal structures look similar to those of another dinosaur, the , a type of ankylosaur with a large bony larynx that may have been flexible enough to produce trills, allowing it to chirp like birds, researchers told the Times.
They believe that the Pulaosaurus lived during the late Jurassic period and belonged to the same group of animals that would later give rise to “duck-billed” dinosaurs like the hadrosaur. However, millions of years of evolution separate the Pulaosaurus from the Pinacosaurus, and neither belongs to the group of dinosaurs that eventually gave rise to birds. While it is possible that they developed their vocal characteristics independently, the presence of similar structures in such different species suggests that the ancient ancestors of dinosaurs may have been singers.
This means that the origin of bird song could be in creatures that lived over 230 million years ago, but how or when the vocal apparatus of birds evolved remains a mystery, as does whether there were dinosaurs that had their incredible vocal ability.
