Interactive designer, Marguerite Humeau has re-constructed the vocal tracts of various pre-historic beasts in an attempt to re-create as accurately as possible the sounds they would have made.

Seeing the skeletal remains of one of nature’s long-deceased giants accompanied by generic roars is standard museum fodder but interactive designer, Marguerite Humeau has taken a novel approach to the preservation of the natural world. By drawing on palaentologists, vets, designers, engineers, explorers, radiologists, sound and 3D designers, she has managed to re-construct the vocal tracts of numerous extinct mammals and fit the mechanisms inside models of the fossilised skulls to which they once belonged. Given that vocal chords are made from soft tissue and thus not able to fossilise, the project was based on prediction as well as expertise but no doubt provides are more scientifically accurate representation of sounds not heard for millions of years.

Humeau’s idea was to use sound as a way of re-asserting the lost physical presence of these creatures as opposed to generating a mythical romance. Proposal For Resuscitating Pre-Historic Creatures is a thoroughly multi-disciplinary endeavour that demonstrates the way different fields can complement one another for both creative and scientific purposes as well as proffering a sensory dimension to our understanding of pre-history.

The models are currently on display at the Politique Fiction exhibition in St Etienne but if you can’t make it to France, check out the video above.