Reconstructed Jurassic insect calls evoke a 165-million-year-old forest soundscape
The sights and sounds of the Jurassic era are long gone, and we will never know for sure what that ancient world looked and sounded like. Fossils can offer clues, and reconstructions can give us a sense of the noises some animals might have made. Now scientists have turned their attention to insects and reconstructed the calls of Jurassic relatives of modern-day crickets and katydids…
Scientists have reconstructed the calls of Jurassic relatives of modern-day crickets and katydids, which lived around 165 million years ago in the Middle Jurassic period in Inner Mongolia, China. These insects, which include fossilized wings from nine species, produced a wide range of sounds, including pure tone calls at pitches similar to some living crickets and high-frequency ultrasonic calls above 20 kilohertz.
This ultrasonic communication may have evolved before bats, helping insects avoid predators and communicate with mates. The diverse acoustic signals could have also helped prevent their calls from being masked by other species in the same forest.
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