The sound of the land before time

Fossil-based bioacoustics with machine learning reconstructed Jurassic insect sounds, revealing ultrasonic communication existed 100 million years before bats.

• Fossil-based recreation: Researchers used 165-million-year-old katydid (bush cricket) wing fossils from Inner Mongolia, China, measuring wing teeth and comb spacing to extrapolate the pitch and rhythm of Jurassic insect calls.
• Machine learning fills gaps: A machine-learning model trained on a database of hundreds of modern katydid species' songs (pitch, syllable duration, temperature effects) predicted the chirp repetition rates fossils couldn't reveal directly.

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