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Crickets make a big contribution to the sounds of a summer night. And they’ve been doing so for some 165 million years. Now paleontologists have reconstructed the song of a long-extinct bushcricket—based on its remains.
蟋蟀的鳴聲是夏夜的一個(gè)美妙音符。它們?cè)缭?.65億年前就這樣做了。借助一個(gè)灌叢蟋蟀的遺骸，古生物學(xué)家還原了這個(gè)早已滅絕了的蟋蟀物種的歌聲。
The researchers got hold of a bushcricket fossil from the Jurassic period with well preserved wings. Even the stridulating organs, which insects rub together to make noise, were visible, which allowed researchers to compare the extinct cricket to 59 living species.
研究人員獲得了一個(gè)侏羅紀(jì)時(shí)期的蟋蟀化石，它的翅翼保存完好，甚至它的發(fā)聲器官——相互摩擦的雙翼，都清晰可見。這一切使得研究人員可以拿這個(gè)滅絕物種同現(xiàn)存的59個(gè)蟋蟀物種進(jìn)行比較。
The scientists concluded that the crickets produced single frequencies in short bursts. And based on physiology and the comparisons, they estimated the pitch and length of each note that the ancient species sang. Here’s the call:
科學(xué)家們得出結(jié)論：這種蟋蟀在短時(shí)間內(nèi)發(fā)出單一頻率的鳴聲。基于生理學(xué)和比較學(xué)的理論，他們估計(jì)出了這個(gè)古老物種的每個(gè)音符的音高和長(zhǎng)度。這是它的鳴叫聲：
The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
這項(xiàng)研究結(jié)果刊登于美國(guó)國(guó)家科學(xué)院院刊。
This work shows that the anatomy to make music had already evolved over a hundred million years ago. Like modern bushcricket species, the ancient male crickets probably sang to advertise their presence and reproductive quality to potential mates. As a bonus, they’ve helped us know a bit about the sound of their long-lost world.
這項(xiàng)研究表明，能夠發(fā)聲的生物結(jié)構(gòu)早在1.65億萬(wàn)年前就出現(xiàn)了。正如現(xiàn)在的灌叢蟋蟀一樣，古老的雄性蟋蟀可能是通過(guò)鳴聲宣示他們的存在或向潛在配偶顯示雄性力量。而它們也幫我們略微知曉了來(lái)自那個(gè)久已失去了的世界的聲音。
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