From 165 million years in the past the mating call of the prehistoric katydids can now be heard again thanks to the efforts of an international team of scientists.

Scientists from U.S. and China have recreated the ancient mating call of the cricket-like bugs that lived during the Jurassic Period after studying a remarkably complete fossil of the insect. The fossil was able to give the scientists an idea of how the insect was able to make music since its music-making structures in its body were so clearly preserved.

The fossil is a newly discovered species of ancient katydid called Archoboilus musicus. The tiny insect was able to make sound by rubbing the structures on its wings in a behavior called stridulation. According to a written statement from England's Bristol University, the katydid produced a song that lasted 16 milliseconds and had a frequency of 6.4 kilohertz.

"This discovery indicates that pure tone communication was already exploited by animals in the middle Jurassic, some 165 million years ago," one of the researchers, Dr. Daniel Robert, said in the statement. "For Archaboilus, as for living bush cricket species, singing constitutes a key component of mate attraction. Singing loud and clear advertises the presence, location and quality of the singer, a message that females choose to respond to--or not."

The Jurassic insect produced music with their wings much like its modern day counterparts. A "plectrum" on one wing dragged along a comb-like structure on the other wing to produce sound. By looking at the wing structures the scientists were able to estimate the type of sound the ancient insect made.

The discovery offered a unique look back at what the ancient world sounded like, which surprisingly would have sounded like today's nocturnal world. Professor Mike Ritchie from the University of St. Andrews noted that even back then crickets were already producing the same musical calls as today's crickets.

"People thought singing in crickets probably evolved later from a startle reflex," he told BBC Nature. "But this suggests that [very early on] they were already... producing these lovely, pure tones to compete for a mate.

"If you think of Jurassic Park, we now know what it would have sounded like and it's different from what we expected; it's much more like today."

The team's report is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.