Brown was inspired and immediately started working on her first project, Rawr! A study by Sonic Skulls, a work that continues to be performed by the Dinosaur Choir. Both projects focus on Corythosaurus, but at different stages of their lifespan to investigate how changes in peaks in adult maturity affect their voices. However, the biggest difference between the two projects is how the sound is made – reimagining the vocal cords of the dinosaur.
“With Rawr!, we used a mechanical throat, so people actually had to blow in the mouthpiece to create sound. But once we started showing it, we realized that people couldn’t interact with it in a hygienic way, and the pandemic’s way solidified that. When I started thinking about more computer science. I also had more computer science.
Works about the Dinosaur Choir officially began in 2021, with Brown heading to Canada, where Corissorus should reside in order to update her research. She and Gajewski collaborated with paleontologist Thomas Dudgeon of the University of Toronto and the Royal Museum of Ontario to analyze recent CT scans and 3D manufacturing. Since then, they have established a life-sized replica of the head of an adult Corythosaurus until its complex nasal passages.
“I’m very proud of the nasal passage,” Brown joked. “I learned about a year of CT breakdown to make them as accurate as possible, considering that the effects of burying millions of years will also be made to them.”
After completing the skull model, the dinosaurs’ vocalization itself began. Now, with a vocal box in computational form, it provides Brown with more control to test new research without even having to rebuild everything from scratch.
“These models are based on a set of mathematical equations related to sound mechanisms, such as changes in air pressure and other affected variables over time,” she said. “I found some of these models in the literature and incorporated them into the code based on the latest research.”
In particular, Brown was inspired by a paper that observed the bending dragon throat, which was discovered only in 2023. This led the researchers to assume that non-Abian dinosaurs would have made Syrinx more like a bird (located in the chest) than the throat of mammals and alligators (which is on the throat) (at the throat).
Georgia Institute of Technology and Music
