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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美妙音符。它們早在1.65億年前就這樣做了。借助一個灌叢蟋蟀的遺骸，古生物學家還原了這個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侏羅紀時期的蟋蟀化石，它的翅翼保存完好，甚至它的發聲器官——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滅絕物種同現存的59個蟋蟀物種進行比較。
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:
科學家們得出結論：這種蟋蟀在短時間內發出單一頻率的鳴聲。基于生理學和比較學的理論，他們估計出了這個古老物種的每個音符的音高和長度。這是它的鳴叫聲：
The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
這項研究結果刊登于美國國家科學院院刊。
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.
這項研究表明，能夠發聲的生物結構早在1.65億萬年前就出現了。正如現在的灌叢蟋蟀一樣，古老的雄性蟋蟀可能是通過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自那個久已失去了的世界的聲音。
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