How researchers use machine learning to recreate dinosaur-era insect chirps

You must have heard the ancient insect sounds and songs in Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur movies wherein the trills and high-pitched chirps fill the primeval forests as characters move through large leaves and trees. While those sounds have been whipped up by Hollywood sound engineers, scientists are taking the help of technology for a different approach. They are using machine learning to reconstruct them straight from 165-million-year-old fossilised insect wings.According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers blended exceptionally preserved fossil remains, biomechanical tests on living species, digital simulations and machine learning models to resurrect a partial acoustic portrait of the Middle Jurassic period.