Duck-Billed Dinosaurs Emitted Low, Eerie Sounds

Oct. 16, 2008 -- Duck-billed dinosaurs' bony head crests, which ranged in appearance from long and pointy to huge, Elvis-style pompadour shapes, likely sounded as unusual as they looked, suggests new evidence.

The crests were used to produce low, bellowing calls, suggest the new findings which will be presented today at the annual meeting of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology. The work presents some of the strongest evidence to date that at least some dinosaurs communicated with sound.

But what could they have been communicating?

"It is possible they used their calls to attract mates, or to warn of predators," lead author David Evans told Discovery News.

WATCH VIDEO: Get to know a duck-billed dinosaur with paleontologist Dr. Bob Bakker.

"The low frequencies of sound likely produced by the crest would have been well suited for traveling long distances and through densely packed forests," added Evans, a paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto.

Related Content:

Evans and his team analyzed both juvenile and adult lambeosaur dinosaur skulls from four duck-billed species: Corythosaurus casuarius, Lambeosaurus sp., Hypacrosaurus stebingeri and Hypacrosaurus altispinus.

Although brain matter and other soft tissue eroded away long ago, the researchers were able to fill in the blanks by observing the structure and shape of the dinosaur bones, which they studied using CT scans.

"It's difficult to infer the function of structures in an extinct dinosaur when there is so little resemblance to any living animal," admitted co-author Jack Horner, a Montana State University paleontologist.

The scientists determined that the part of the brain responsible for sense and smell was relatively small and primitive in all of the specimens. Other paleontologists had theorized that the nasal passages within the bony crests provided the dinosaurs with increased olfactory surface area, allowing for a super keen sniffing ability, but the scans suggest otherwise.