Musical dinosaurs

If Jurassic Park wasn’t far-fetched enough for you, try this. The leaves on prehistoric trees may have behaved like gramophone needles, recording the roars of dinosaurs, claims Brian Wybrow of London (GB 2364819). He says that some fossilised leaves with an “unexplained, unusual wavy surface” may originally have been covered with natural wax that was scratched by the spiny tip of another leaf. This, Wybrow reckons, could have acted as a stylus, impressing the waveform of sounds from dinosaurs— in much the same way as Thomas Edison used a stylus and a wax cylinder to record his own voice. But why patent it? You never know—cloned…