A musician has created instruments inspired by the skulls of
Corythosaurus
dinosaurs with a hollow crest on their heads, thought to have been used for vocalizations. The result is a very particular concert.
We don’t know what voice the dinosaurs had: in the films they roar in a frightening way, but in reality – according to what has emerged from the most recent studies – perhaps they emitted sounds similar to those of birds (which, after all, are their descendants). In other cases, however, perhaps their vocalizations were more similar to deep “moos”: this is the case of dinosaurs like Corythosauruswhich lived 77-75 million years ago in North America, equipped with a hollow crest, crossed by the nasal passages, which is thought to have been used to amplify sounds.
Courtney Brown, musician, professor at Southern Methodist University (USA), has developed musical instruments inspired by their skull, Dinosaur Choir (the “dinosaur choir” which you can listen to above): an in-depth study is dedicated to the project on Evidence Network n° 397. Brown tells us how these instruments were born and how they are played.
What is the tool based on?
On computed tomography of fossil skulls. Then retrodeformation is performed, i.e. the “repair” of the deformation of the skull caused by millions of years of burial and crushing, with 3D modeling software. We do this separately, for the outside of the skull and the inside of the nasal passages. Then the parts are “assembled” into the virtual model of the instrument, finally created with 3D printing.
For Dinosaur Choir I collaborated with Thomas Dudgeon, paleontologist from the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto (Canada). He provided the external 3D skull model that we used in the latest version and performed the initial scan of the nasal passages. Designer and sculptor Cezary Gajewski then designed the skull and other parts of the instrument. I wrote the software that simulates dinosaur vocal cords, based on the vocal mechanisms of birds and modifying the parameters to reflect the hypothesized anatomy of dinosaurs (particularly dinosaurs). Corythosaurus). Currently, I am using a vocal model based on the syrinx (the vocal organ of birds) of the collared dove. The parameters are then modified based on the skull of the Corythosaurus. This process is highly speculative and imaginative, since there are no remains of vocal organs of Corythosaurus.
Where did the inspiration for such an instrument come from? And how did it evolve?
While traveling, I stopped at the Tucumcari Dinosaur Museum in New Mexico, USA, and saw an exhibit on the Parasaurolophusa dinosaur that scientists believe used its long cranial crest as a sounding board to amplify sound.
You could press a button and hear the reconstructed verse. And, as a singer, I fell in love with the idea of making dinosaurs sing. The Corythosauruslike the Parasaurolophuswas a hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur with a large crest that housed the nasal passages and which, according to scientists, served for resonance. I chose the Corythosaurus because Lawrence Witmer of Ohio University had scans of the skull and nasal passages of a Corythosaurus subadult. From here we arrived at the first model, Rawr!, in foam. For the first version, I used a mechanical larynx created with thin balloons to shape the vocal cords, and the instrument was played by blowing into a tube (as in a traditional wind instrument). In the second version, however, the production of sound is based on software, on a vocal model: this allows me to update everything by incorporating recent discoveries on the anatomy of dinosaurs and experimenting, instead of having to build a new “physical” larynx.
How do you play it?
In the first version you blow into a tube. In the second, musicians blow into the microphone to control the volume of the sound: the harder you blow, the louder the sound. The shape of the mouth – detected by a video camera – controls the tone: if it is wider, as in a smile, it has a higher pitch, while if it is more closed it has a lower sound. The computer-generated sound – from the virtual model that reproduces the dinosaur’s vocal chords – is emitted from a speaker and resonates through the nasal cavities, just as it would happen in a dinosaur.
What will be the next creations?
For Dinosaur Choir we have 2 models based on Corythosaurus of different ages, adult and subadult. In 2026 we want to make the software public, so that anyone can create a tool with 3D printing. We also want to recreate another dinosaur with a crest, Lambeosaurus lambei. And also explore the possibility of basing it on the anatomy of a dinosaur from another group: an ankylosaur, which has particular nasal passages.
There have already been several concerts with the current instruments…
I have done several interactive performances at museums, festivals and scientific conferences. I have played solo as well as in an ensemble, the Dinosaur Trio, and collaborated with a saxophonist.
