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Description
66 million years ago during the very end of the Cretaceous period in what is now the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, USA, a territorial dispute between two fully-grown Tyrannosaurus rex has escalated into a full-blown fight after neither was willing to back down. The two massive predators charge and bite at each other fiercely, their powerful jaws capable of crushing bone being great weapons in combat as well, and both manage to cause the other injuries, but the victor is clear when one manages to knock the other over onto the ground. And the winner has decided to go even further and rip its opponent's jaw clean off, permanently deforming the other tyrannosaur and ruining (if not ending) its life.

HollyberryMantis (www.deviantart.com/hollyberrym… ) requested I draw two T. rex fighting so here it is. I think everyone here already knows what a Tyrannosaurus is so I won't bother introducing it. It's quite obvious that during combat, these 12-meter long theropods would use mainly their jaws and bite their opponents since their short arms won't be doing much (at least it's not Carnotaurus). And various specimens of large tyrannosaurs, including some of Tyrannosaurus rex itself, show bite marks matching others of their own kind, especially on the face, proving that biting (and particularly face biting) were common in their intraspecific combat. I also thought about how many extant crocodilians tend to fight each other mainly by biting, and that their fights can commonly result in losing limbs and parts of their jaws or tails (check out this Twitter post that gives a good idea of it mobile.twitter.com/arminreindl… ). And these crocodiles often keep on surviving even after these amputations and keep on living their usual lives like nothing happened. The documentary Dinosaur Revolution also portrayed something along the lines of this, where a Tyrannosaurus had its arm eaten by an opponent in a fight but then went on to keep living a normal rex life until it died in the K-T mass extinction event. Of course, survival after such injuries is easier for captive animals and a wild tyrannosaur doesn't have human caretakers so this one may have a tougher time. There's also some signs of cannibalism on some Tyrannosaurus specimens, and while cannibalism wouldn't have been very common I suppose they wouldn't turn down a carcass of a fellow fallen rex if they found one, and perhaps if one were gravely injured then others would also target it. A large amount of extant animals are cannibalistic to some extent (lions, chimps and hamsters are just a few examples) but others of their kind don't make up the bulk of their diet so this type if behavior would be more opportunistic and unlike what Jurassic Fight Club wants you to think of Majungasaurus. Perhaps the winner tyrannosaur in the picture would eat its opponent after but I'll leave whether it did to your imagination.

The other animals in the drawing are the enantiornithine bird Avisaurus archibaldi (the two green birds flying past) and the alvarezsaurid dinosaur Trierarchuncus prairiensis (the small theropod dinosaur standing on the mushroom-covered log in the background on the right). The trees forming the forest are Dryophyllum subfalcatum (a relative of extant walnuts of the Juglandaceae) and the ferns are Osmunda sp. (this is a genus that still exists today and includes the royal ferns, fossil spores similar to these are known from Hell Creek). Yeah, Hell Creek has such a good fossil record I can use specific plant species instead if generic green stuff.

Description
66 million years ago during the very end of the Cretaceous period in what is now the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, USA, a territorial dispute between two fully-grown Tyrannosaurus rex has escalated into a full-blown fight after neither was willing to back down. The two massive predators charge and bite at each other fiercely, their powerful jaws capable of crushing bone being great weapons in combat as well, and both manage to cause the other injuries, but the victor is clear when one manages to knock the other over onto the ground. And the winner has decided to go even further and rip its opponent's jaw clean off, permanently deforming the other tyrannosaur and ruining (if not ending) its life.

HollyberryMantis (www.deviantart.com/hollyberrym… ) requested I draw two T. rex fighting so here it is. I think everyone here already knows what a Tyrannosaurus is so I won't bother introducing it. It's quite obvious that during combat, these 12-meter long theropods would use mainly their jaws and bite their opponents since their short arms won't be doing much (at least it's not Carnotaurus). And various specimens of large tyrannosaurs, including some of Tyrannosaurus rex itself, show bite marks matching others of their own kind, especially on the face, proving that biting (and particularly face biting) were common in their intraspecific combat. I also thought about how many extant crocodilians tend to fight each other mainly by biting, and that their fights can commonly result in losing limbs and parts of their jaws or tails (check out this Twitter post that gives a good idea of it mobile.twitter.com/arminreindl… ). And these crocodiles often keep on surviving even after these amputations and keep on living their usual lives like nothing happened. The documentary Dinosaur Revolution also portrayed something along the lines of this, where a Tyrannosaurus had its arm eaten by an opponent in a fight but then went on to keep living a normal rex life until it died in the K-T mass extinction event. Of course, survival after such injuries is easier for captive animals and a wild tyrannosaur doesn't have human caretakers so this one may have a tougher time. There's also some signs of cannibalism on some Tyrannosaurus specimens, and while cannibalism wouldn't have been very common I suppose they wouldn't turn down a carcass of a fellow fallen rex if they found one, and perhaps if one were gravely injured then others would also target it. A large amount of extant animals are cannibalistic to some extent (lions, chimps and hamsters are just a few examples) but others of their kind don't make up the bulk of their diet so this type if behavior would be more opportunistic and unlike what Jurassic Fight Club wants you to think of Majungasaurus. Perhaps the winner tyrannosaur in the picture would eat its opponent after but I'll leave whether it did to your imagination.

The other animals in the drawing are the enantiornithine bird Avisaurus archibaldi (the two green birds flying past) and the alvarezsaurid dinosaur Trierarchuncus prairiensis (the small theropod dinosaur standing on the mushroom-covered log in the background on the right). The trees forming the forest are Dryophyllum subfalcatum (a relative of extant walnuts of the Juglandaceae) and the ferns are Osmunda sp. (this is a genus that still exists today and includes the royal ferns, fossil spores similar to these are known from Hell Creek). Yeah, Hell Creek has such a good fossil record I can use specific plant species instead if generic green stuff.