The Dinosaur Choir is a project that focuses on lambeosaurine hadrosaurs—duck-billed dinosaurs known for their distinctive hollow cranial crests, which likely functioned as resonating chambers for vocal communication. By utilizing CT scans of hadrosaur skulls and integrating paleontological research, the team reconstructs these crests and nasal passages with a 3D printer to emulate the sounds these dinosaurs might produced.
How it works: Users give voice to the dinosaur by blowing into a mouthpiece, exciting a larynx mechanism, and resonating the sound through the hadrosaur’s full-scale nasal cavities and skull. This action allows an embodied glimpse into an ancient past.
Firstly it was presented in 2011 by Courtney Brown:
However, concerns about hygiene, especially highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic, prompted a redesign. The team transitioned to a computational model, allowing users to produce sounds by blowing into a microphone, with the system simulating the vocalizations digitally.
The latest prototype got 3rd place at the 2025 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech
There are a few limitations to consider in this research.
First, even with sophisticated modeling techniques, the simulations may simplify the way sound would have realistically traveled through and been shaped by a dinosaur’s skull. Second, expanding the project to include other species would be both time-consuming and costly, with each new model still relying on a significant degree of speculation.
I think the idea behind the project is amazing. I’ve always wondered how people came up with the sounds of dinosaurs in movies and cartoons—I wasn’t sure if any of them were based on real research or just made up. But producing sound from even one real dinosaur skull is really impressive. I like that they brought it to the public through museums and exhibitions because it gives people a chance to immerse themselves in the world of the distant past.
