Bite Force Estimates

[Tyrannoraptor]

Hey, can anyone help me out with this? I was wondering about the estimated bite forces (preferably in tons) of the T. rex, Allosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Spinosaurus.

I've read somewhere about 5 tons of bite force being a very conservative estimate for Tyrannosaurus rex. I also know that Allosaurus (and Carcharodontosaurus for that matter) didn't have a really strong bite, being comparable to modern leopards. I don't know anything about Spinosaurus.

[tracer]

there is a book called The Dinosauria, edited by David B. Weishampel, Peter Dodson and Halszka Osmolska. i think you need that book.

but i will say that detailed information about dinosaurs of the sort you're interested in requires some fairly large leaps in logic by the people providing the info, since much of what is actually known is based purely on fragments of environmentally altered mineral material from over 65 million years ago. so you can have only one of two things - detailed information which is based on a fair degree of supposition, or the fragmentary information that is precisely accurate.

it's a lot of fun to think about dinosaurs stomping around and chomping stuff and wondering which one was the cartel boss, but having a rottweiler-versus-doberman-type analysis of them presupposes somewhat of a lack of concern about the finer points of accuracy.

but you would enjoy that book...

[Tyrannoraptor]

So basically those estimates are largely just guesses.

I'm not interessted in this because I would want to figure out who was "the boss" because quite frankly i find those comparisons pointless, as those animals usually lived far from one another and more importantly millions of years apart, so those "Spinosaurus vs. T. rex" debates are completely pointless. There's only one instance where such comparisons would make any sense, and that is in the case of Carcharodontosaurus and Spinosaurus.

I'm interested in this because of trying to understand how such characteristics would influence their behaviour/hunting style.

[tracer]

hmmm, bite force in tons influencing their behavior/hunting style, eh?

offensive and defensive weapons and skills are almost always a compromise, and there are many variables. the book i referenced focuses on comparative analysis of fossils so it seems like it would be great for allowing you to examine form and hypothesize function.

bite-force strength doesn't matter if the animal never gets to deliver the bite due to an unwieldy and massive head not getting whipped around to where it needs to be in time. similarly, the weight of the jaws and the length of them and the attachment locations of the muscles closing them and the quality of the muscle fiber matters too, because if the jaws don't snap shut quickly enough, it could be a fatal problem for their owner. and then there's the morphology of the teeth. where are these tons of force being delivered? are we trying to crush through bone, or slice through flesh? are we interested in ripping or holding, or both? and how many teeth are optimal? if we have a bunch of fat teeth then would it be like a guy being able to lie on a bed of nails, with the force spread out over too many pressure points to have maximum effectiveness?

the book has a bunch of lateral view and some dorsal and ventral view drawings of the skulls of large carnosaur species all together so you can compare them. you can note the large "windows" in the skulls that were apparently for a lightening effect to aid in speed of movement. and you can also note from the bone structure that some had much more massive jaw muscles than others.

what is my point in all this? well, it's that i think the carnosaurs with the greatest bite strength probably went for the back of the neck to crush vertebrae and paralyze prey and end the fight. and i think the carnosaurs with the fastest head movement and bite probably did the same thing, but succeeded for a different reason, because they were more often "firstest with the mostest".

it is extremely dangerous for predators to hunt, but they must to live. their survival depends not just on killing their prey, but on killing their prey without themselves being injured. so the back of the neck is a good target, because paralysis ends the fight immediately, which tells me at least partially why the ceratopsians felt they needed to sport a frill. the throat is the other good target, because a lack of oxygen to the brain, either from blood loss or from being unable to breathe, is the second-best way to stop the fight as quickly as possible.

yes, i realize i didn't answer the question. i guess a mechanical engineer, a physicist and a paleontologist could get together and try to calculate the bite force applied on any given tooth point location using the morphology of the skull to estimate the mass of the muscles operating the jaw and extrapolating the jaw strength based on the strength of the muscle mass of a komodo dragon or a gator or a savannah monitor or something.

but really, me personally, i think that kind of thing is really just a gig to spend grant money.

[Scylla]

If you can't predict bite force you can't get a Discovery channel special about your new fossil predator On a more serious point, it might help to understand behavior since a bone crusher probably has a different bite force than an insectivore. But these estimates would be based on morphology (thickness of bone, size of muscle attatchments, etc) So the bite force becomes a derivative measure of several morphologic measurements (just like top speed, brain/body ratios, etc.) that can be used to help understand more about the creature. Maybe, if your assumptions are correct. This may help, they give some estimates:

http://carnivora.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=zoological&thread=9892&page=1#120031

Edited November 17, 2011 by Scylla

[Tyrannoraptor]

You pretty much nailed it, Tracer, because this is what I'm interested in.

I've read that Allosaurus couldn't crush bone, its teeth were too weak for that, they would break more easilly than Tyrannosaur's, so this could point to different hunting style. I think that T. rex could hunt in similar way that sharks do, perhaps targeting limbs of an animal or immobilizing its target by delivering a crushing bite to its hips (targeting a neck of Triceratops might just be too dangerous) and then wait for the shock and bloodloss do the rest of the work. Perhaps the various means of defense of its prey were the reason for T. rex to have such a strong bite in the first place.

Now for Allosaurus it would be different, and Bakker's theory of "hatchet attack" seems to be a good one. Allosaurus would charge towards the target and slam into it with jaws wide open (Allosaurus had the ability to open them extremely wide). Teeth themselves couldn't withstand tremendous forces, but its skull could, and while some teeth would break off others would act like a saw. So maybe the animal targeted parts with major arteries, to make its victim lose its ground because of the blood loss

Two different styles, same result - a good meal

And thanks, Scylla

[tracer]

it's suspected by at least one avocational student of dinos that allosauri sharpened their teeth with occam's razors.

[bear-dog]

Don't really matter,if any one of these nailed you cancel Christmas.