Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

... and played for us now, which means what exact- what are we, what are we hearing there?

Those, that, that's the work of bioacousticians from, uh, the University of Graz, and they took fossils from nine different species and used AI, used special techniques to more or less bring sound to those fossils.

So those are dinosaurs.

We don't know what the dinosaurs sounded like, and there's a very good reason for that.

The bottom line is it was a terrible disaster for so many people who live already in one of the poorest regions of the world.

And, uh, joining us now is Dr. Jakob Steiner, who is a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria, but he's based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he speaks to us, where he joins us now.

He is a geoscientist, and he focuses on water resources and associated risks in mountain regions.

He has been giving his opinion recently.

Not as terrifying as a T-Rex per se, but for Torin Jonsson, it's just as captivating.

Mr. Jonsson is a bioacoustician at the University of Graz and a co-author of a new study that recreated the sounds made by various species of insects during the Jurassic era.

We reached Mr. Jonsson in Graz, Austria.

Torin, it's lovely to my ears what we just heard there.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Torun Jonsson is a bioacoustician at the University of Graz.

He's also a co-author of a new study on the sounds of Jurassic insects published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

You can be happy if you can cover the costs with it, unless you are called Eliud Kipchoge or Scott Jurek or someone else.

Can you live from it? Do you have sponsors? How do you get around the rounds? Or is there something like sports scholarships at the University of Graz, like in American colleges? How does that work for you, the economic one?

Well, what I do at the University of Graz has nothing to do with the sport.

I do that mainly professionally.

For the sport, I mean, I'm very grateful that I actually have two great supporters or even three.

Authorities have to take a hard look in the mirror now and ask how they will be rebuilding in these places.

They will also have to take a close look at the projects in Nepal that have not been built yet, whether they'll be approved after this event, said Jacob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria, who is currently based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Hydropower projects that were operating or under construction were fully or partly destroyed across Rosua, Nuwakot, and Dading, among the worst-hit districts.

Hundreds of workers in Nepal are unaccounted for from a dozen hydropower projects, according to the Independent Power Producers Association Nepal.

She's done a lot of extraordinary reporting for us and brought some amazing stories to our listeners.

Well, on News Hour last week, we heard from Jakob Steiner, a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria and a fellow at the Asian Mountain Academic Alliance.

Jakob's been telling me that it's now clear what was the catalyst for last Wednesday's flood.

It took us the last couple of days to realize that there was a glacier involved, but it was not the glacier itself to have caused the failure, but it was the whole mountain below the glacier that took the glacier with it and dropped many hundreds of, uh, meters below, uh, on the proglacial terrain there and must have picked up a lot of the water that was either in the ground or in the river to eventually and, of course, mix with the debris that was lying around to eventually cause this huge flood wave.

Why not? So I'm Victoria Müller.

I'm currently a postdoctoral researcher working at University of Graz, Austria.

And my research is revolving around PFAS in general.

And more precisely on how these environmental contaminants transport and transfer and how do you call that? Being modified during transformation and how they are taken up by environmental systems.

The catastrophic floods followed the collapse of a glacier, and there are now fears of further flooding.

One year ago, geoscientist Jakob Steiner from the University of Graz in Austria prepared a report on glacial lake bursts for the Nepali government as part of efforts to prepare the country for future disasters.

He says he's frustrated the government was not ready for the latest, uh, flash flooding.

He's now preparing a new report for the Nepali government.