Noteworthy research: World's most ancient music from 165million-year-old insect is revived

By Paul Bentley

British scientists have revived the world’s most ancient known music after bringing back to life the song of a prehistoric insect from 165 million years ago.

The love song of the extinct cricket that lived 165 million years ago has been brought back to life by scientists at the University of Bristol.

The song - possibly documented to date - was reconstructed from microscopic wing features on a fossil discovered in North East China.

On song: The crooning of the ancient cricket has been recreated thanks to a fossil found in China


It allows the sounds that would have been heard by dinosaurs and other creatures roaming Jurassic forests at night to be heard today.


Some 165 million years ago the world was host to a diversity of sounds.

Primitive bushcrickets and croaking amphibians were among the first animals to produce loud sounds by stridulation (rubbing certain body parts together).

Modern-day bushcrickets - also known as katydids - produce mating calls by rubbing a row of teeth on one wing against a plectrum on the other wing but how their primitive ancestors produced sound and what their songs actually sounded like was unknown - until now.

A chart showing the evolution of the cricket

A chart showing the evolution of the cricket

On discovering several insect fossils a group of Chinese palaeontologists, including Jun-Jie Gu and Professor Dong Ren from the Capital Normal University in Beijing, contacted Dr Fernando Montealegre-Zapata and Professor Daniel Robert both experts in the biomechanics of singing and hearing in insects, in Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences.

The group also teamed up with Dr Michael Engel of the University of Kansas, USA, a leading expert on insect evolution.

The Chinese researchers provided an exceptionally detailed bushcricket fossil from the mid-Jurassic period.

The specimen had such well-preserved wing features that the details of its stridulating organs were clearly visible under an optical microscope.

Such information has never been obtained before from insect fossils. It was identified as a new fossil species and named Archaboilus musicus by the Beijing-Kansas team.

Dr Montealegre-Z and Professor Robert examined the anatomical construction of the fossil’s song apparatus, and compared it to 59 living bushcricket species.

They concluded that this animal must have produced musical songs, broadcasting pure, single frequencies.

Professor Robert said: ‘This discovery indicates that pure tone communication was already exploited by animals in the middle Jurassic some 165 million years ago.

‘For Archaboilus, as for living bushcricket species, singing constitutes a key component of mate attraction.




The research, published today in PNAS, implies that the acoustic environment was already quite busy 165 million years ago with many animals such as amphibians and other arthropods singing at the same time, possibly chorusing, within the additional background noise produced by waterfalls, streams and wind.