Bizarre Dinosaur Headgear Used For Shouting

[n2doc]

By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
posted: 16 October 2008 08:31 am ET


The helmet-crested lambeosaur Corythosaurus sported a bony head crest that probably served as a resonating chamber for making sounds. Credit: Michael Skrepnick.

The ornate headgear worn by duck-billed dinosaurs millions of years ago was used to make eerie, bellowing calls, suggests a new study.

The study also showed that as the dinosaurs matured into adults, their voices probably changed from high-pitched to deep, just like ours do (at least for guys).

The researchers specifically looked at a subfamily of duck-billed dinosaurs (plant-eaters with long, flattened snouts) called lambeosaurs that sported flashy caps that would have put to shame any "Star Wars" hairdo. The caps enclosed nasal passages that looped through the head crest to form large air chambers before passing into the airway (throat).

Past explanations for the wonky headgear have proposed that it was used to boost the dinosaurs' sense of smell, to regulate temperature or to allow sound to resonate for communication.

more:

http://www.livescience.com/animals/081016-dinosaur-crests.html

Maybe that explains Sean Hannity's Hair.....It is really a resonating chamber!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. ah! A method of gathering christians for their walk, side by side.

I get it.

[rosesaylavee]

2. Bwaaaahahaaa

I wasn't expecting that in the Science Forum. I don't know why.

:rofl:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. Well, you realize that PI = 3.

and only 3.

[sam sarrha]

3. elephants communicate over 5 miles away with low frequency sound, it isnt reflected like higher

higher frequencies.. the waves literally flow around trees like water allowing them to travel further...

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june1/elephant-052505.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/03/010312071729.htm

http://www.nwf.org/NationalWildlife/article.cfm?issueID=74&articleID=1057

[Nihil]

5. OK ... I'm confused ...

(I know, I know ... :P )

> Past explanations for the wonky headgear have proposed that it was
> used to boost the dinosaurs' sense of smell, to regulate temperature
> or to allow sound to resonate for communication.

So what's "new" now? They are simply repeating stuff that I read about
decades ago ...
:shrug:

[Igel]

7. They've rendered some of the hypotheses untenable.

If you have 5 choices, and can rule out 4 of them, that's an advance.

Peirce pointed out that there's no end to abduction--the creation of hypotheses that available data are consistent with. However, abduction isn't a valid logical process--it proves nothing, since none of the abductions is more valid than any other, and, in fact, they may all be wrong. But abduction is a good place to start (and while it's a bad place to finish, it's where many stop thinking).

Then science turns to testing the hypotheses--making sure that they actually do handle all the data, making sure the data is what it appears to be, and finding new data.

When it comes to testing hypotheses, however, there's a practical, pragmatic constraint: Finite resources, whether that be material, time, or researchers. So researchers don't test all the hypotheses, just the ones that they (and funders, as it turns out) think are the most promising. However they define that.

It's also good form to not only show that your hypothesis accounts for all the data, including predicting new data (which is subsequently found to exist, as predicted), but also that the competing hypotheses make predictions that are false according to the new data, or according to new data found specifically to falsify the predictions you think are wrong. Doing the latter and not the former is progress, but of a negative kind (it can end up with 'all the theories are wrong', which is an important, but not always award-winning, advance).

This shows one competing theory survives the latest round of data, and is likely to be correct--the crests were easily involved in sound production, and the critters easily had the cognitive "chops" to process the sound. The theory made a prediction, which proved valid. Moreover, it shows that there's not a tie with a competing theory, smell, because the critters almost certainly couldn't process the information such an olfactory organ would have yielded; that theory made a failed prediction. They've incorporated the visual effects into their conclusion as an additional role (never underestimate reproduction as a factor in design--after all, it's at the heart of evolution). Has for temperature regulation, my reading says they've just left that to one side, perhaps it was trashed before, perhaps they just didn't unearth relevant data.

[RagAss]

6. I imagine a sinus infection would be quite the mess.

[Ediacara]

8. This was news in 1973

When it was first proposed and tested....