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Carcharodontosaurus saharicus v Tyrannosaurus rex
Topic Started: Jun 8 2012, 05:34 PM (129,975 Views)
Taipan
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Carcharodontosaurus saharicus
This huge meat eater was 45 feet long (5 feet longer than T-rex) and weighed 8 tons, making it one of the largest carnivores that ever walked the earth. This African carnosaur had a gigantic 5’4" long skull and enormous jaws with 8" long serrated teeth. It walked on two legs, had a massive tail, bulky body and short arms ending in three-fingered hands with sharp claws. Carcharodontosaurus is one of the longest and heaviest known carnivorous dinosaurs, with various scientists proposing length estimates ranging between 12 and 13 m (39-43.5 ft) and weight estimates between 6 and 15 metric tons. Its long, muscular legs, and fossilized trackways indicate that it could run about 20 miles per hour, though there is some controversy as to whether it actually did, a forward fall would have been deadly to Carcharodontosaurus, due to the inability of its small arms to brace the animal when it landed. Carcharodontosaurus was a carnivore, with enormous jaws and long, serrated teeth up to eight inches long.

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Tyrannosaurus rex
Tyrannosaurus is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin), commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous Period, 67 to 65.5 million years ago.[1] It was among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Relative to the large and powerful hindlimbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were small, though unusually powerful for their size, and bore two clawed digits. Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded Tyrannosaurus rex in size, it was the largest known tyrannosaurid and one of the largest known land predators. By far the largest carnivore in its environment, Tyrannosaurus rex may have been an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs and ceratopsians, although some experts have suggested it was primarily a scavenger. The debate over Tyrannosaurus as apex predator or scavenger is among the longest running in paleontology. Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time; the largest complete specimen, FMNH PR2081 ("Sue"), measured 12.8 metres (42 ft) long, and was 4.0 metres (13.1 ft) tall at the hips. Mass estimates have varied widely over the years, from more than 7.2 metric tons (7.9 short tons), to less than 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons), with most modern estimates ranging between 5.4 and 6.8 metric tons (6.0 and 7.5 short tons). Packard et al. (2009) tested dinosaur mass estimation procedures on elephants and concluded that dinosaur estimations are flawed and produce over-estimations; thus, the weight of Tyrannosaurus could be much less than usually estimated. Other estimations have concluded that the largest known Tyrannosaurus specimens had a weight exceeding 9 tonnes.

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Tyrannosaurs Rex vs Carcharodontosaurus
Edited by Taipan, Apr 24 2015, 10:18 PM.
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spinosaurus rex
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beastlier in terms of bite force. but i'm not convinced that biteforce> serrated detition.
look at extant sharks for example. their bite force is not completely impressive, yet their detition has magnitude it to the point that it can literally juzz saw through bone.
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Vodmeister
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Crushing bites are more effective on smaller animals, slicing bites are better against larger animals.
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spinosaurus rex
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are you refering along the lines of gape? i would agree. but tyrannosaurus did have enough gape to abtain areas to attack on carcharodontosaurus. therefore your statement is not completely valid in this senario. theres little chance carcharodontosaurus is going to survive 6 tons of pressure at it's head, neck, etc, just as i see little chace of tyrannosaurus surviving heavy lecerations applied to the neck or any other area it can place it's wider gape at.
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Hatzegopteryx
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I doubt he is just referring to gape, his statement is right even if out of that department.
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spinosaurus rex
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yes, i do agree that a stronger, smaller gape is better suited to smaller, armored prey items, but the reason that its not all that applyable in this senerio because tyrannosaurus wasn't all that limited in applying it's gape to a similar sized adversery. but carcharadontosaurus definantly have an advantage in that department
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Vobby
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spinosaurus rex
Apr 8 2014, 08:40 AM
but i'm not convinced that biteforce> serrated detition.
T. rex has serrated teeth, just to say. Gape is the point.
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Jinfengopteryx
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It has been pointed out very often that Tyrannosaurus had serrated teeth. Critics think the teeth are too wide to use the serrations effectively.
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Vobby
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Jinfengopteryx
Apr 9 2014, 02:11 AM
It has been pointed out very often that Tyrannosaurus had serrated teeth. Critics think the teeth are too wide to use the serrations effectively.
Brute strenght would make up for that. Also, the wider the teetth, the stronger is the hold on the piece of meat you want to rip away. How brutal. I alway got excited when I talk about Tyrannosaurus.
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Vobby
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sorry for the double post but Now that I think about that! Width matters! How didn't I ever figured it out?

Let's say Carcha has a gape 2 times as wide as that of T. rex, and that T. rex skull is twice as wide as that of Carcharodontosaurus. If Carcharodontosaurus would bite a portion of the opponents body 1 meter long, for example, than T. rex would bite a portion of meat 0,5 meters long. Au contraire, if T. rex bite an area which is , say, 40 cm wide, carcha would bite an area only 20 cm wide. If these areas are rectangular (more or less they should be...) we have 2000cm2 for both the animals!

THE AREA THEY CAN BITE IS IDENTICAL!

Without even considering the great difference in strenght! This is very important!

Now, of course the area is not really identical, my numbers are just examples, but I really think I'm making a somewhat important point.
Edited by Vobby, Apr 9 2014, 02:38 AM.
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theropod
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The point about gape isn’t the area they can bite, it’s the girth of the regions they can bite. That is why crocodilians do not excel at taking very large animals, despite their huge jaws and bite forces. That is also why monitor lizards that are macrophagous have ziphodont slicing dentition, while durophagous species have rounded crushing dentition. Their bites both have the size to cause sufficiently traumatic injuries anyway, but that doesn’t mean they can be applied with the same ease.

In what sense do you mean "strenght would make up for that?". In terms of cutting power? No, there is a reason that despite a very marked difference in bite force, similar-sized crocodilians do not cause the kind of exanguination known from sharks.
That’s simply due to the kind of tissue involved, soft tissues that can resist a lot of strain and tension require sharp edges to cut, not just deform them and slip on them, bones which have a high stiffness and hardness and can stand a lot of compression require blunt force to break, not just scratch them.

T.rex teeth are serrated, I don’t know how often I have already read people remark that, but that’s not the point.
Its dental carinae are blunt, that the edge angle is very obtuse means they are not effective at tearing due to the large contact area with the substrate, and the denticles aren’t like those of animals that use them to slice, they are basically rounded cubes and act like a blunt, smooth edge. Wanting to make T. rex an animal apt at tearing flesh just because its "bite force could make up for all that" is naive.
I’m not sure whether that was what you implied, but I think I’ve read that claim a few times too many, given it contradicts the very reason not all jaws are identical (and, by most people’s logic, built exactly like T. rex’ one).

Also, we are talking about what is perhaps a two-fold difference in the bite force, just to roam our possible misunderstandings.
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Vobby
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theropod
Apr 9 2014, 05:54 AM
The point about gape isn’t the area they can bite, it’s the girth of the regions they can bite. That is why crocodilians do not excel at taking very large animals, despite their huge jaws and bite forces. That is also why monitor lizards that are macrophagous have ziphodont slicing dentition, while durophagous species have rounded crushing dentition. Their bites both have the size to cause sufficiently traumatic injuries anyway, but that doesn’t mean they can be applied with the same ease.

In what sense do you mean "strenght would make up for that?". In terms of cutting power? No, there is a reason that despite a very marked difference in bite force, similar-sized crocodilians do not cause the kind of exanguination known from sharks.
That’s simply due to the kind of tissue involved, soft tissues that can resist a lot of strain and tension require sharp edges to cut, not just deform them and slip on them, bones which have a high stiffness and hardness and can stand a lot of compression require blunt force to break, not just scratch them.

T.rex teeth are serrated, I don’t know how often I have already read people remark that, but that’s not the point.
Its dental carinae are blunt, that the edge angle is very obtuse means they are not effective at tearing due to the large contact area with the substrate, and the denticles aren’t like those of animals that use them to slice, they are basically rounded cubes and act like a blunt, smooth edge. Wanting to make T. rex an animal apt at tearing flesh just because its "bite force could make up for all that" is naive.
I’m not sure whether that was what you implied, but I think I’ve read that claim a few times too many, given it contradicts the very reason not all jaws are identical (and, by most people’s logic, built exactly like T. rex’ one).

Also, we are talking about what is perhaps a two-fold difference in the bite force, just to roam our possible misunderstandings.
Is it just my impression, or Marek is having a good influence to lexic of this forum? ;) Sadly, I'm not able to be as good in english, so I'll have to write ignorantly as always (I sound better in italian, I swear!).

The reason I pointed out that T. rex has a serrated dentition is just that Spinosaurus' rex post implied the opposite, I'm sure that more or less every poster already knows that.

About crocodiles: I kinda dislike how you use the false ghavial as a reference to demonstrate that Spinosaurus could kill large animals (despite the fact the false ghavial's preys are small even for crocodilian standards) and then you use the crocodile example to show that T. rex was strictly durophagous. The tooth of a crocodile is not curved, is not serrated, therefore it is not a good analogy for Tyrannosaurus. Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing you of biased judgements and the such, I'm just making you notice that the examples you use may appear in contradiction if you don't elaborate enough.

"Brute force would make up for that"... I meant saying: biting stronger means that the thick tooth can still sink into the meat (and bone), and having ridicoulously thick neck vertebrae and muscles means that, shaking or pulling, the thick teeth can to a certain extent cut (of course, less that if they were ziphodont), while what isn't cut would be teared away from the body's prey, or just sqeezed (or crushed, for bones, as you said) by bite force alone.

I still think the area thing I talked about is something not only important, but also somewhat new as a consideration here: as long as the girth of the opponent isn't excessively high (and it is not the case with similar sized animals), the portion of body that T. rex would bite is similar to that of an Allosauroid, becouse even if the bite is "shorter", it is on the other hand "wider". Also, the fact that the teeth are thicker and bite force higher means that T. rex, before shaking/pulling what it bited, would have already stabbed large holes in the opponent's body.

I guess you would have something to say about all of this, but I think we can agree on this point: it is not "biteforce= control+crushing bones vs gape= slicing+bigger wounds", it is a little more complicated.
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theropod
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Your inglish looks fine to me, but I’m not a native speaker either so that isn’t an expert’s judgement.

Both my analogies have their justification; one was to show that Spinosaurus was not restricted to tiny, weak prey items (which of course does not mean that T.rex did not take relatively and likely also absolutely bigger prey than Spinosaurus), the other was to demonstrate animals don’t make up for lacking cutting power of their teeth by sheer bite force.

The thick tooth can of course sink into the mean and bone. Crocodiles can do that too. But it will not slice through them unless drawn with a great deal of effort, and it will not cause exanguination comparable to that resulting from a "slicer’s" bite. By the same logic; cutting teeth can also damage bones, even saw into them, but they are not well-suited for that of course.

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I still think the area thing I talked about is something not only important, but also somewhat new as a consideration here: as long as the girth of the opponent isn't excessively high (and it is not the case with similar sized animals), the portion of body that T. rex would bite is similar to that of an Allosauroid, becouse even if the bite is "shorter", it is on the other hand "wider".

Allosauroids (and theropods in general) have very deep bodies with just lightly convex sides. This makes them very difficult to bite without a large gape angle.
Also, even if it is possible, that does not mean the ease and quickness with which a bite can be applied would be the same. That’s a matter of the size and angle of the gape, the mobility of the head and neck, and, of course, how good a hit has to be in order to be effective. In an Allosauroid (or komodo dragon), it can be enough to nip at the prey to cause the damage that needs to be done, no prolonged phase of mandibular adduction and accelleration of a heavy skull, building up of sufficient strain to break bones and rip tissues etc. necessary, because the forces required by the teeth are smaller; they slash, not crush. And obviously, if the mandible is not in the way that can be done more easily.
A T. rex bite would take considerably longer than a carnosaur bite.

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Also, the fact that the teeth are thicker and bite force higher means that T. rex, before shaking/pulling what it bited, would have already stabbed large holes in the opponent's body.

Yes, but is that relevant? A bite can hardly be treated as an isolated movement independant of what the body does.

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I guess you would have something to say about all of this, but I think we can agree on this point: it is not "biteforce= control+crushing bones vs gape= slicing+bigger wounds", it is a little more complicated.
Yes, complex it is. That’s also why I think many people put far too little tought into their claims when stating "that animal has higher bite force, so it has better bite!!!!".
Edited by theropod, Apr 9 2014, 08:15 PM.
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Vobby
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theropod
Apr 9 2014, 08:14 PM

[...]
The thick tooth can of course sink into the mean and bone. Crocodiles can do that too. But it will not slice through them unless drawn with a great deal of effort, and it will not cause exanguination comparable to that resulting from a "slicer’s" bite.

[...]
Allosauroids (and theropods in general) have very deep bodies with just lightly convex sides. This makes them very difficult to bite without a large gape angle.
In an Allosauroid (or komodo dragon), it can be enough to nip at the prey to cause the damage that needs to be done, no prolonged phase of mandibular adduction and accelleration of a heavy skull, building up of sufficient strain to break bones and rip tissues etc. necessary, because the forces required by the teeth are smaller; they slash, not crush. And obviously, if the mandible is not in the way that can be done more easily.
I'll address only these some points: first, of course T.rex bite needs more strenght to be applied, strenght it has. Of course it would slice much better that any crocodiles, having curved and serrated teeth. But I wonder if, given an identical bitted are, which bite can damage a bigger volume... ignoring the fact that a killing tool can sink deeply into the body of a prey/opponent, due to the force of the grip, would make us think that eagles are very inefficient killers. Once T.rex bite something, it wouldn't stop damaging the surface, it would keep closing the jaws as much as it can, then shake or pull, literally separating hundreds of kilos of meat from the bitted body. I think that internal damage, chance of reaching internal organs with deep, penetrating bite must definitely be considered.

About the comparison between Allosauroids and varanids. I don't question its validiy, the dentition is extremely similar and, almost for sure, the way they use it too.
But. Complicating the matter a little, we would notice that the mouth's shape is completely different amongst the two families. The skull of a komodo dragon is much wider! I wonder, now, how would it make the bite of an allosauroid more or less efficient... Do varanids has comparable gapes with allosauroids? If not, we would have a confirmation of the importance of width in inflicting also slicing wounds.

About theropods flat body: head, neck and limbs are perfectly fine targets, not to talk about tails. About torsos, I doubt it would be any different from wolves or hyenas biting each other bodies. Also, some random reconstruction makes me think that theropods flanks would be quite rounded:

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Theropods, like the vast majority of terrestrial animals i guess, seem to have quite rounded ribcages, allowing any of them, given a comparable size, to freely target it. Also the fact that their head is particularly big relatively to the torso must be considered. Besides this, we have reports and video of leopards destroying ribcages of chimps and severely wounding the chest of warthogs, so to bite prey's/opponent's torso doesn't seem to be an ability belonging to "slicers" only.
Edited by Vobby, Apr 10 2014, 12:06 AM.
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theropod
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The posteriormost extent is not that representative of the shape of a ribcage, this image tells us very little on that issue. also that rib is incomplete and would probably extended a fair deal further ventrally when restored.EDIT:
Oops, different post.
You have to imagine the whole abdomen below that (check a skeletal, of a different theropod if you want). The last pairs or ribs are very short and by far not as deep dorsoventrally as the thorax was deep.

Most theropods have ribcages considerably taller than wide. Here→ is a Suchomimus for example, and here→ is an Allosaurus. Some are markedly slap-sided, others more rounded, but Tyrannosaurids have by far the most barrel shaped of them. It is not easy to get a hold of the surface, especially if it is not covered in loose flaps of skin and fat (but biting those doesn’t do fatal damage, and afaik extant carnivores, save for exceptional cases, do not use this to kill).

In any case, biting its opponent would be far quicker and easier to accomplish for a carnosaur than for a tyrannosaur (this even applies to regions both can bite, like the head and neck). Depending on what it needs to do, it can use more or less force. If it wants to cut a superficial tendon or blood vessel for example, a little scratch is all it takes, if it wants to open the abdominal cavity or take a big chunk out of the neck muscles, it will obviously strike and pull with more power. But it is fully capable of causing deep and traumatic injuries, just as much as the tyrannosaur.

Komodo dragons are not known for exaceptional gape angles at the mandibuloquadratal joint at least as to my knowledge, but they have highly kinetic skulls and mandibles that allow them to "push" their teeth into the flanks of large animals (that being said, they are usually not tall enough to reach those, so I’m talking mostly about feeding here). Also, I don’t know what the maximum gape they can attain really is, so let’s not draw conclusions. We know from Bakker 1998 that in Allosaurus the craniomandibular angle is ~90° or so (a fairly practical angle, because it gets the mandible out of the way if it wants to use its upper jaw to strike and slash at something), and the intramandibular joint and cranial kinesis would add a some more to that.

Of course gape is a payoff with bite force, but these animals do not require a lot of the latter to function.

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About the comparison between Allosauroids and varanids. I don't question its validiy, the dentition is extremely similar and, almost for sure, the way they use it too.
But. Complicating the matter a little, we would notice that the mouth's shape is completely different amongst the two families. The skull of a komodo dragon is much wider! I wonder, now, how would it make the bite of an allosauroid more or less efficient... Do varanids has comparable gapes with allosauroids? If not, we would have a confirmation of the importance of width in inflicting also slicing wounds.
I don’t think the wound size is the issue here, since komodo dragons don’t kill by extracting chunks. Its rather that they use more lateroposterior sawing motions when cutting away at the carcasses of large prey with tough hides, they use their curved tooth arcades in this manner. Maybe the wider structure is important for support, and of course it might faciliate feeding. Also, tood deep and long a skull could be impractical for an animal with a varanid’s stance.

I would presume it is even, the narrower shape of the mouth (and of course the greater size due to the square cube law) will allow the bite to go deeper, since there is less tissue that has to be compressed. Komodo dragons don’t rely that much on taking out chunks for killing, they usually sever the leg tendons and blood vessels (which of course a carnosaur could do as well, depending on where it bit).
So perhaps the overally larger, narrower but deeper skulls with a more prominent system for head depression are an adaption for reliance on deep biting in theropods, which they can employ more effectively since they are taller, while it doesn’t really matter much for komodo dragons.
Edited by theropod, Apr 10 2014, 12:40 AM.
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thesporerex
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Wow the quality of posts here has sky rocketed
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