{"id":32084,"date":"2025-07-18T12:35:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T12:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=32084"},"modified":"2025-07-18T13:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T13:23:10","slug":"this-dinosaur-probably-tweeted-more-than-it-roared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=32084","title":{"rendered":"This Dinosaur Probably Tweeted More Than It Roared"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The anatomy of a Chinese fossil offers a hint that birdsong may be as old as the dinosaurs themselves.<\/p>\n

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Since the 1930s, dinosaurs have rumbled, snarled and roared on film. But the fossilized inspirations for these cinematic characters have preserved little evidence for any such dramatic voices.<\/p>\n

In a paper published last week in the journal PeerJ<\/a>, researchers announced the discovery of a fossilized herbivorous dinosaur from China preserving a surprisingly birdlike throat. It provides a clue that the origins of birdsong<\/a> might go as far back as the beginning of dinosaurs themselves.<\/p>\n

The two-foot-long dinosaur, which the researchers named Pulaosaurus, was discovered in 163-million-year-old rocks in northeastern China, said Xing Xu, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and an author of the paper. The largely complete skeleton offers a strong anatomical view into the fleet-footed, beaked animal, an early member of the family that later produced \u201cduck-billed\u201d hadrosaurs<\/a> and horned dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

The Jurassic period formation that produced Pulaosaurus is also the source of other dinosaur discoveries like the feathered proto-bird Anchiornis<\/a>, the tiny, batlike Yi qi<\/a> and the feathered herbivorous dinosaur Tianyulong<\/a>. Unlike those animals, Pulaosaurus is not preserved with obvious soft tissues that could help better explain its living appearance. \u201cOn some parts of the fossil we thought we\u2019d found very thin filaments, but we can\u2019t confirm that,\u201d Dr. Xu said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The team did note interesting formations in the stomach region of the fossil but hasn\u2019t determined what those are. \u201cThey could be stomach contents \u2014 food eaten by this dinosaur, or organs, or maybe even eggs within the body,\u201d Dr. Xu said.<\/p>\n

The most interesting remains were found within the throat. In vertebrates, vocal organs play an important role in protecting the airway and helping produce everything from simple hisses and grunts to speech. In most living reptiles, these tissues are composed of cartilage, and can produce simple bellows, grunts, groans and chirps. Modern birds have vocal organs made up partially of delicate bones, allowing them to make much more complicated sounds \u2014 including, in some cases, mimicking human speech.<\/p>\n

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The anatomy of a Chinese fossil offers a hint that birdsong may be as old as the dinosaurs themselves.Since the 1930s, dinosaurs have rumbled, snarled and roared on film. But the fossilized inspirations for these cinematic characters have preserved little evidence for any such dramatic voices.In a paper published last week in the journal PeerJ, researchers announced the discovery of a fossilized herbivorous dinosaur from China preserving a surprisingly birdlike throat. It provides a clue that the origins of birdsong might go as far back as the beginning of dinosaurs themselves.The two-foot-long dinosaur, which the researchers named Pulaosaurus, was discovered in 163-million-year-old rocks in northeastern China, said Xing Xu, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and an author of the paper. The largely complete skeleton offers a strong anatomical view into the fleet-footed, beaked animal, an early member of the family that later produced \u201cduck-billed\u201d hadrosaurs and horned dinosaurs.The Jurassic period formation that produced Pulaosaurus is also the source of other dinosaur discoveries like the feathered proto-bird Anchiornis, the tiny, batlike Yi qi and the feathered herbivorous dinosaur Tianyulong. Unlike those animals, Pulaosaurus is not preserved with obvious soft tissues that could help better explain its living appearance. \u201cOn some parts of the fossil we thought we\u2019d found very thin filaments, but we can\u2019t confirm that,\u201d Dr. Xu said.The team did note interesting formations in the stomach region of the fossil but hasn\u2019t determined what those are. \u201cThey could be stomach contents \u2014 food eaten by this dinosaur, or organs, or maybe even eggs within the body,\u201d Dr. Xu said.The most interesting remains were found within the throat. In vertebrates, vocal organs play an important role in protecting the airway and helping produce everything from simple hisses and grunts to speech. In most living reptiles, these tissues are composed of cartilage, and can produce simple bellows, grunts, groans and chirps. Modern birds have vocal organs made up partially of delicate bones, allowing them to make much more complicated sounds \u2014 including, in some cases, mimicking human speech.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32086,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32087,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32084\/revisions\/32087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}