This Crazy Instrument Lets Us Hear How Dinosaurs Might Have Sounded
NEWS | 29 March 2025
What did dinosaurs really sound like? If you’ve ever found yourself asking that question, a musical project using 3D models of dino skulls could be getting closer to answering it. And, note to Hollywood, they probably didn’t roar. Dinosaur Choir is a musical instrument developed by artists Courtney Brown and Cezary Gajewski, which reconstructs the vocal tract of a Corythosaurus—a type of duck-billed dinosaur with a large, distinctive crest on its head. To make a sound, the user stands in front of a camera while blowing into a microphone. Depending on how hard they blow and the shape of their mouth as they do, the vocalizations that resonate through the dinosaur’s skull will change. In effect, the user’s breath becomes the dinosaur’s breath. The result is not the roar that we hear in the movies, but something that sounds more like a deep wail. The instrument has just been recognized at Georgia Tech’s 2025 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, an event that brings together inventors from around the world to discuss ideas on the future of music. “Dinosaur Choir was distinct in that Dr. Brown’s musical background gave it an expressive element in addition to all the great scientific work that went into it. Plus, it looks striking, and the concept is intriguing," says Jeff Albert, associate professor and chair of the competition. But the path to creating this crazy instrument is one that started almost 15 years ago. “In 2011, we were on a family road trip and we stopped off at a dinosaur museum in New Mexico,” Brown tells WIRED. “There I saw an exhibit of a Parasaurolophus, which had crests like a Corythosaurus. There had been many theories as to why this family of dinosaurs had these crests, but researchers have settled on the idea that it could have been for sound resonation. As a musician, I felt empathy with them, like—OK, you were singers too.”
Author: Chris Haslam. Verity Burns. Nena Farrell. Emily Mullin. Makena Kelly. Steven Levy. Julian Chokkattu. Louryn Strampe. Megan Farokhmanesh. Vittoria Elliott.
Source