Researchers have taken a fascinating step into the past by recreating the sounds that extinct insects from the Jurassic Period might have made. Using a combination of AI modeling and careful analysis of fossilized wings, the team was able to approximate the calls of katydid-like creatures that lived around 165 million years ago. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved examining ridged features on the wings — such as the number of «teeth», spacing between them, and the size of the vibrating area — to determine pitch and rhythm. They also studied modern insects’ stridulation mechanics with lasers and ran computer simulations. An AI model then predicted the call patterns based on the fossil shapes. One striking finding: one species seemed capable of producing ultrasonic chirps (20–22 kHz), just above the human hearing range. This challenges the common belief that ultrasonic calls in insects evolved specifically to evade bats — since this species lived millions of years before bats appeared, other predators might have driven this evolution.
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