Such a question is what Jun-Jie Gu and Fernando Montealegre-Z set out to answer, aided by a mid-Jurassic katydid fossil collected in the Juilongshan Formation in Inner Mongolia, China (2). The fossil, described as Archabolius musicus, a member of the extinct family Haglidae, had particularly well-preserved stridulatory structures according to the researchers. A. musicus finds its closest living relatives in the families Prophalangopsidae (includes hump-winged grigs) and Tettigoniidae (modern katydids).
Using songs and the biomechanics of wing stridulation in species that exist today as well as the few available wing fossils that have been found, the authors were able to reconstruct the main acoustical properties of the Jurassic katydid. In resonant (“musical”) species, the tooth spacing increases toward the basal end of the file. The tooth distribution and wing morphology of A. musicus, suggest that it produced resonant, pure-tone sounds. The authors fitted the length of the A. musicus file into phylogenetic regression models to predict the frequency of the sound: 6.4 kHz.
A clip of the call is available here.Movie from Gu, J-J. et al. (2012) PNAS 109, 3868–73 (suppl. info.)
This call is only an extrapolation of one of the many sounds you might have heard if you could have walked in a late Middle Jurassic Forest, but as more fossils are discovered and we learn more about how modern insects generate their calls, such extrapolations will become more accurate. Eventually perhaps, with the help of more math and biology, we will compose a Jurassic symphony from these bits of song.
References
- Hinz, J.K. et al. (2010) A high-resolution three-dimensional reconstruction of a fossil forest (Upper Jurassic Shishugou Formation, Junggar Basin, China). Palaeobio Palaeoenv 90, 215–240. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12549-010-0036-y
- Gu, J-J. et al. (2012) Wing stridulation in a Jurassic katydid (Insecta, Orthoptera) produced low-pitched musical calls to attract females. http://pmid.us/22315416

Michele Arduengo
