Parasaurolophus Symphony

Flash Fiction by Gary Every

The musicians in the orchestra pit fidgeted nervously.  Herman took a deep breath and slipped a replica dinosaur skull over his shoulders.  Herman and the other Parasaurolophus players attempted to channel their inner reptile in the moments before the concert, their own heads stuck inside the much larger dinosaur skulls.

The massive Parasaurolophus skulls required a special harness to support the tremendous weight so the tiny human beings inside would not be crushed.  The crest extended behind the head for almost six feet.  The crests were made of bone but were mostly hollow, consisting of a labyrinth of nasal passages.  Scientists believe the dinosaurs used these crests to bugle like elk.

Paleontologists took sonograms of complete Parasaurolophus skull fossils so they could fabricate 3-D replicas and recreate a low-pitched trumpeting call whose echoes had not been heard on this planet for 75 million years.

It was only a matter of time till some creative composer penned a Parasaurolophus symphony.  The score had been written, the orchestra rehearsed, and an eager audience assembled, waiting slightly impatiently.

The conductor raised his baton, and the symphony began.  Herman puffed up his cheeks and blew.  Herman felt playing the Parasaurolophus was a lot like playing the bagpipes.  “One blew and blew and blew until it felt like there was not another drop of breath in your body, and then you blew some more.”  As the pod of Parasaurolophus players blew and blew, their crests filled with air.  A low moaning drone swelled the walls of the concert hall.  The audience was startled by the sound something primordial stirred deep inside, and they were shocked into rapt attention.

The song started slowly, whole notes held, vibrating outwards like ripples in a pond.  The composer’s symphony imagined the sun rising, gradually warming the blood of the gargantuan reptilian herbivores.  Their crests gradually glowed bright red as the temperature rose.

Herman tilted the snout of his dinosaur beak towards the sky.  The other Parasaurolophus players did the same.  The song was an anthem in praise of the sun, a celebratory thank you for the green and growing earth.  A rattle of the tambourine represented the gnashing of teeth.  As the dinosaurs began to eat, their feet began to march.  Kettle drums boomed, mimicking the sound of a herd of three-ton beasts stomping across the earth.  

The entire herd was forced to move often, deforesting everything in their path, eating continuously.  As they moved and sang, the elongated crests filled with melody.  The tunes resembled whale songs, sonic maps of the earth depicting migratory routes, following green and growing seasons.

One Parasaurolophus raised her head, worshipping the sun - the Giver of light, the Mother of the photosynthetic cycle.  This Parasaurolophus sang her song of anthemic prayer, dimly aware of a comet heading in her planet’s direction, a streaking asteroid wailing the sad jazz song of extinction.  Comet Chicxulub would not arrive and crash off the coast of the Yucatan for another ten million years, but if the tiny brain inside the giant dinosaur could have understood math, it would have been able to calculate orbits and realized, with dead certainty, that Comet Chicxulub was arriving to end the age of dinosaurs with devastating efficiency.  The world would change instantly.

The song of the Parasaurolophus would be silent until it was revived 75 million years later by a paleontologist musician who had a little bit too much free time on his hands.  A sonogram was used to make a 3-D replica of the skull, and the song of the Parasaurolophus echoed across the earth again, songs celebrating the warming sun, praising the green and growing earth, and filled with gratitude for the joy of being alive.  An entire herd of giant herbivores sang these anthems together in harmony, overjoyed at being part of a family.

Crests glowing red, the Parasaurolophus players had one more trick up their sleeve.  Paleontologists believe that these duck-billed dinosaurs might have possessed folds of loose skin on their faces.  These folds may have been used to alter the sounds of the air being pushed through the labyrinth of nasal passages.  Herman and the other Parasaurolophus players puffed their cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie going bebop boogie bonkers.  As the cheeks of the giant replica dinosaur skulls puffed out and fluttered, the audience gasped.  The buzzing of the dinosaur lips gave the music a brass-like quality, a fanfare for the setting sun before the blood cooled and sleep overcame hunger.

The conductor put down his baton, and the symphony ended.  Herman and the other musicians exhaled, grateful for not having made any loud, obvious mistakes.  The song of the Parasaurolophus echoed off the concert hall walls, slowly fading.  The silence was broken when an audience comprised entirely of warm-blooded mammals, creatures descended from a long line of insectivores and egg thieves, stretching back millions and millions of years, to a time when they shared the planet in the shadow of their mighty reptilian overlords, stood and applauded wildly with a raucous cheering.  I believe the Parasaurolophus would have been pleased.