It’s one of those questions everyone wonders at some point... what noise did dinosaurs actually make?
The honest answer as I'm sure you can guess is, we can’t know for certain. Sound doesn’t fossilise, and sadly nobody left us any recordings from the Jurassic. But that doesn’t mean scientists have nothing to go on.
One of the best clues comes from living relatives. Birds are basically modern dinosaurs, and crocodiles are close ancient cousins, so their calls can give us hints. Birds chirp, honk, boom, hiss, and sing, while crocodiles produce deep rumbles, bellows, and dramatic growls.
Some fossils also preserve body features linked to sound. Certain duck-billed dinosaurs, such as Parasaurolophus, had long hollow crests connected to their nasal passages. These may have acted like natural instruments, helping produce booming calls that carried over long distances.
Fossils of a small armoured dinosaur called Pinacosaurus had voice box structures that suggest it may have been capable of bird-like sounds. All together this means many dinosaurs could have sounded less like the roaring movie monsters we’re used to, and more like a strange mix of birds, reptiles, and some low resonating calls.
Large dinosaurs may also have communicated using low-frequency sounds or vibrations, similar to how elephants communicate today.
So while we may never know the exact voice of Tyrannosaurus, it’s possible the real prehistoric soundtrack was far stranger than Hollywood ever imagined.
Fun fact: Crocodiles can communicate before they even hatch, with babies calling to each other from inside the egg. If close dinosaur relatives do that today, some dinosaurs may have started making noise before they were even born.
