Changed to the extant African bush elephant for simplicity's sake.
Anyway, at (near) parity I staunchly support the
Tyrannosaurus. Here's something most people don't seem to get about elephants: their biggest asset in a fight is their size, potentially lethal tusks notwithstanding. A 2013 study (Chelliah & Sukumar, 2013; cited down below) shows that, when musth status is equal, elephant fights and agonistic encounters favor size/strength over tusk possession,
even when the size advantage is modest. Ultimately, it's the bigger and stronger elephant that wins the fight,
whether it has tusks or not. In combat against members of their own species, elephants seem to employ their tusks for goring only after their opponent has been rendered vulnerable, whether through outwrestling/overpowering them or via the delivery of blunt force trauma.
Source:
Chelliah & Sukumar (2013)->Source:
The Behavior Guide to African Mammals Including Hoofed Mammals, Carnivores, Primates (p. 265)->The capacity to outwrestle/overpower a foe and the capacity to deliver blunt force trauma are both functions of the elephant's size compared to its opponent. Unfortunately for the elephant, it's fighting an exceptionally well-armed macropredator that is just as big as itself. In other words, the elephant is deprived of its most important asset in this fight.
Even directly comparing the tyrannosaur's jaws to the elephant's tusks, I rate the former as superior weapons. Blow for blow, I just don't see a single (non-vital) stab from the tusks being as bad as a single bite from the rex. A tusk piercing your skin and flesh sucks, but compare that to getting a bunch of ribs or a shoulder blade crunched and broken by the tyrannosaur's maw. And that's not even accounting for the tyrannosaur proceeding to wrench off a 500 lb chunk of flesh; just one of that, even if it's not immediately incapacitating, is going to lead to hypovolemic shock. You might think that "
one stab from the tusks will kill", but that is by no means a given.
There are times where a goring animal needs to stab its victim several times or a prolonged period of time just to kill it.
1.)
This elephant-> was stabbed 20-30 times before it dying an unspecified (but apparently long) amount of time afterwards.
2.)
This elephant cow-> (gored by a bull, so the attacker would have had something like a two-fold size advantage over it) had >10 stab wounds all over its body, which suggests it wasn't killed with just one stab.
3.)
This cape buffalo-> was stabbed multiple times on the ventral surface of its body by a much larger white rhino and didn't die until the next day.
4.)
This elephant-> was stabbed multiple times in the chest, forehead, and stomach, and was said to probably have been attacked multiple times by the rival elephant. This elephant
didn't even retaliate when it was being attacked (it was a very peaceful, non-aggressive elephant).
5.)
This elephant-> had to be gored about 20 times to die.
6.)
This elephant-> was gored by another and took three hours to die (it isn't clear how many times it was stabbed).
7.)
These two elephants-> had goring wounds in multiple body parts, which means they weren't just stabbed once (the first elephant had stab wounds on its lower abdomen
and anal region, the second had them on its lower abdomen, anal region,
and behind the ear).
There are times where a goring animal stabs its victim and sometimes visibly injuries it, but fails to kill it.
1.)
This rhino gored by an elephant-> (
original image source->)
2.) "
Seven males (four tuskless and three tusked) with puncture wounds, presumably caused by tusks of an opponent, were observed in the population during the study period of 458 field days (during which time at least one adult male was sighted every day).", from
Chelliah & Sukumar (2013)->.
3.)
These white rhinos-> have patches of red on their bodies, and even some bleeding wounds on the neck (on one), the leg (on one), or the face, but of course they weren't killed by that. The one with the neck wound even gains the upper hand and begins goring its foe from underneath...and those didn't one-shot its opponent either.
4.)
This black rhino fight-> has one being gored on the chest but it amazingly doesn't even seem to be injured from it. One of them also has a bleeding gore wound underneath its tail that it obviously didn't die from.
5.)
This white rhino-> was stabbed multiple times on its belly by a conspecific while it was lying on its side, but still got back up, was chased by its rival, and took the fight to a pond (there used to be a video available, but not anymore; luckily I remember seeing the video).
So while the elephant, of course, has the capacity to gore the
T. rex to death – if it somehow actually manages to overpower or deliver enough blunt trauma to render the equally-massive dinosaur vulnerable to such an action – chances are it won't do so with just one stab. On the other hand, I can't imagine that one proper bite from the
T. rex is going to do anything other than bite out a piece of flesh and crush bones.
Below are some common responses I hear in matchups like this.
"
The elephant is in the perfect position to gore the theropod's chest"
No it's not. The elephant's tusks would be literally right at the theropod's chest if that were the case, but there's, you know, a head and neck before the chest. The closest thing to the elephant's tusks is therefore the theropod's main weapon. And unless the
T. rex was feeling particularly suicidal (or stupid) and voluntarily let the elephant poke its own chest, it. Won't. Let. That. Happen. And if the elephant were in such a position, the tyrannosaur would already be dangerously close enough to chomp the elephant pretty much anywhere.
“
But the elephant can knock over the bipedal theropod.”
I cannot tell you how many times I've heard this repeated over the years. While it is true that the elephant has an overall advantage in stability (the only advantage it truly has here that really matters), the
T. rex cannot simply be easily knocked down, even if it's only a biped.
1.) Some theropods lowered their centers of gravity by evolving pneumaticity in the sacral bones. The sacral bones exist right above the hips, so because this bone was lightened, the center of gravity was pushed downwards in these theropods. Additionally, the pubic boots at the ends of their pubes were long, heavy bones, which further pushed the CoG downwards. This would improve the balance of these theropods (
Farmer, 2006). Computer models of
Tyrannosaurus already show the CoM being well down from the hips (in fact, almost halfway between the top of the hips and the bottom of the pubes;
Henderson, 2018). And I don't think these models even take into account the two things I've said above, which would probably mean the real CoG was even lower than these models have predicted.
2.)
Tyrannosaurus has enormous hip and thigh muscles for its size, possibly even the proportionately largest "antigravity" muscles in the entire animal kingdom. A conservative estimate suggests that
Tyrannosaurus would have had over twice as much of its body mass devoted to leg extensor muscles in one hindlimb (14.6%) than an elephant would in one hindlimb and one forelimb combined (6.7%) (
Hutchinson et al., 2011). Not only is that going to help a lot with stability, but that would also give
T. rex the edge over the elephant in a physical struggle. Elephants, despite their size, do not have very large or well-developed leg muscles for their size. Since the tyrannosaur's leg joints are also far more flexible than most of the elephant's, this would also grant the legs much stronger propulsive strokes than the elephant's legs. Lastly, according to Bob Bakker, the cross section of a giant theropod's femur is greater than that of an elephant's femur and humerus combined for a given body mass (
link->). In a situation where the two animals are struggling with each other, being able to push and thrust forward with more strength and propulsion is going to be very helpful. If the elephant pushes the
T. rex, the
T. rex will just push back harder.
Much harder.
And if you won't take my word for it, maybe you'll believe scientists who voiced the exact same sentiment (
Power & Compion, 2009).
3.) One final thing people miss about many non-avian theropods: they were long animals for their body mass. An 8.4 tonne
Tyrannosaurus would be 12.3 meters long, undoubtedly longer than an equivalent sized elephant would be. When holding onto giant prey (in this case, the elephant) this high amount of rotational inertia would work to the theropod's advantage by conferring greater stability; much more inertia must be overcome to knock the
T. rex over.
"
But how can the theropod get past the tusks?"
It honestly doesn't need to. There's a lot of surface on the elephant's anterior that aren't covered in tusks. Like, you know, the entire face/cranium behind the tusks, the neck, the forelimbs, and the flanks. A theropod like
T. rex has the entire combined length of its skull, neck, and torso in front of where its legs. It has plenty of reach from where it's standing to stand parallel to the elephant and grab its vulnerable flanks. Also, a study on tyrannosaurid facial bite marks suggests that rival tyrannosaurids most likely positioned their heads side-by-side, with bites being delivered via lateral swings of the head (
Brown et al., 2022). If the
T. rex approaches the fight this same way, then with its fighting style it would completely avoid the tusks of the elephant altogether, while the elephant's first goal wouldn't even be to gore the theropod (it would be to overpower it via wrestling or possibly butt it with its head).
At parity or similar weights, I honestly don't think the
T. rex will be especially hard pressed to take down the elephant. A male African bush elephant has stability on its side, but that's about it (its intelligence is pretty much irrelevant in this fight). It's definitely not as hard of a foe as say, a
Triceratops or
Torosaurus (the tyrannosaur's prey items), or even some extinct proboscideans like an American mastodon. Only if you had an exceptionally large ~10 tonne elephant and a ≤6 tonne
T. rex would I begin thinking the elephant should be the favorite.
