A TYRANNOSAURUS REX wouldn’t have heard your screams. Otto Gleich of the University of Regensburg, Germany, used data from birds to calculate the range of frequency of dinosaurs’ hearing.
The range of frequencies birds hear decreases with increasing body mass and increasing length of a key structure in the inner ear called the basilar papilla. Fossils don’t preserve this, so Gleich measured the cochlear duct, which is typically a third longer and is preserved in archaeopteryx, allosaurus and brachiosaurus.
He calculates that the hearing of archaeopteryx would have been within the range of modern birds, while a 1.4-tonne allosaurus would…
