You may think that, short of a time machine, there’s no way we can answer that question. But perhaps not. A team of scientists based at the University of Florida and Oklahoma State University have been studying the communication sounds made by a wide range of different animals, and they have produced some startling conclusions.

Our results indicate that, for all species, basic features of acoustic communication are primarily controlled by individual metabolism, which in turn varies predictably with body size and temperature. So, when the calls are adjusted for an animal’s size and temperature, they even sound alike.

And that’s true even when comparing creatures with non-vocal means of noise production, such as crickets.

So maybe we can predict what dinosaurs would have sounded like (assuming we can agree on whether they were warm-blooded or not). Amazing stuff, science.