SCIENCE* LAB SCHEME : JURAASSIC TWEET

Birdsong may be a modern rendition of music invented by dinosaurs. 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 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-feet-long [ 60 centimeter ] dinosaur, which the researchers named Pulasaurus, was discovered in 163-million-year-old rocks in northeastern China, And Xiang Xu, a paleontologist in Beijing and an author of the paper.

The skeleton offers a strong anatomical view into the fleet-footed, beaked-animal, an early member of the family that later produced '' duck-billed '' 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 batlike Yi qi and the feathered dinosaur Tianyulong.

The anatomy of dinosaur vocal organs has long been a mystery. '' Even when you have a dinosaur skeleton preserved, you don't always have these isolated bones preserved with other skull elements,'' Dr.Xu said. '' They're very thin bones, and very delicate and hard to preserve.''

The first report of a non-bird dinosaur with fossilized vocal organs - the ankylosaur  Pinacosaurus, which lived millions of years after Pulaosaurus - arrived in 2023.

While Pinacosaurus lacked the distinct voice box seen in birds, its bony larynx was large and mobile enough to possibly help produce the birdlike noises, Pulaosaurus seems to have had a similar vocal setups, Dr. Xu said, albeit one that was less developed.

The World Students Society thanks Asher Elbein.