Episode 52 – Sounds of the Past (Fossil Bioacoustics)

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Education, Natural Sciences, Earth Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 896 Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2019

⏱️ 112 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What did dinosaurs sound like? How did extinct animals make and use sound? Like most behaviors, noises don’t fossilize, but there is some tantalizing evidence that paleontologists have pulled together about fossil bioacoustics. In this episode, we discuss how pop-culture may have misled us, and how scientists have gathered actual clues from living animals and the fossil record – and have even made scientifically-inspired ancient audios! – to reconstruct the sounds of the past. In the news: hatchling insects, bird brains, old flowers, and dinosaur noses. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:04:00Main discussion, Part 1: 00:28:30Main discussion, Part 2: 01:15:00 There are some noises in this episode! The living and reconstructed-fossil sounds we played came from these sources: Great Bittern (Botaurus stellaris) Roger Charters/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML202485) https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/202485 American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) George B. Reynard/Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML163792) https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/163792 Parasaurolophus sound bite by Sandia National Laboratories and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science with Paleontologist Tom Williamson and computer scientist Carl Diegert https://www.sandia.gov/media/dinosaur.htm Katydid Stridulation from Jun-Jie Gu et al 2012. Wing stridulation in a Jurassic katydid (Insecta, Orthoptera) produced low-pitched musical calls to attract females, PNAS (Open access) https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/02/1118372109 All the other animal noises were just made by us! Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures: http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPCFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcast/PodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduw The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org. Muscial Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:18.0	Hello, David. Hello, Will.
0:21.7	And hello, listeners.
0:23.5	Welcome to episode 52 of the Comma Descent Podcast.
0:28.1	And welcome to 2019, our first episode of the year.
0:32.4	We haven't recorded an episode all year.
0:35.0	It's been a while, you know?
0:36.7	Gotta get back into it.
0:38.2	Today, everyone, we have a fun episode for you.
0:40.2	I'm really looking forward to this topic
0:41.7	because we are discussing sounds of the past
0:44.2	or otherwise known as fossil bioacoustics.
0:47.6	Ooh, the noises of the ancient times.
0:50.9	Yes.
0:51.7	So bioacoustics is a fancy term for the sounds living things make and are affected by,
0:58.6	and we're going to be discussing them, but focusing on the ones that fossil animals made.
1:03.6	But how do we know the noises that fossil things could make?
1:07.5	It's a good question, David. Usually we don't. We don't.
1:11.6	No.
1:12.6	And end of the episode.
1:13.6	All right.
1:14.6	Thanks, everyone.
	...

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