Could a Human Beat a T. Rex In Arm Wrestling?

By Bjorn Carey Posted 10.23.2009 at 10:27 am 8 Comments

T. Rex Vs. Stallone: Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection; iStock

“First, we’re assuming that the T. rex won’t just eat the person, right?” asks Jack Conrad, a vertebrate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Right. This is a sanctioned match, and killing your opponent is strictly against the rules. Who's coming out on top?

“Doesn’t matter,” Conrad says. “There’s no chance that any human alive could win.” The T. rex’s arms might have looked wimpy, but they were extremely strong. Each was about three feet long and, based on the size of the arm bones and analysis of the spots where muscle attached to the bone, they were jacked. “The bicep alone—and this is a conservative estimate—could curl 430 pounds,” Conrad says. Even the beefiest humans max out at around an embarrassing 260 pounds.

Surely an Over the Top–era Sylvester Stallone would put up a good fight? “Not even Lou Ferrigno in his prime would stand a chance,” Conrad says. “They didn’t just have big biceps. Their chest and shoulder muscles were huge too. They had huge arms and shoulders—bigger than my leg. They had the strength to rip a human’s arm right out of its socket.”

There is a chance, however, that your competition might not be able to put all that beefy muscle to use. There are dozens of hypotheses about what the T. rex used its arms for, Conrad explains, but the ones taken most seriously involve pushing itself up if it was lying on its belly, tossing big chunks of meat into its mouth, or holding onto females during what scientists suspect was a very vigorous mating routine. These ideas are favored because such actions required Barbie doll–like up-and-down motions of the arm, and fossil evidence indicates that the dino king was incapable of rotating or twisting its arms. “The T. rex probably couldn’t have done the arm-wrestling move,” Conrad says. “So maybe you could get him on a technicality.”

Think you can stump us? Send your questions to fyi@popsci.com.

Previous Article: A Material Based on Sharkskin Stops Bacterial Breakouts

Next Article: Ten Young Geniuses Shaking Up Science Today

8 Comments

link to this comment

scubasdsteve87

10/23/09 at 11:08 am

Being a dino nerd i LOVE this article.

but why is pop sci wasting its time posting something so trivial?

link to this comment

zombieninja

10/23/09 at 11:37 am

Interesting points regarding the arm capabilities...

@scubasdsteve87:
There must not be any science, today =P

link to this comment

Cookiees453

10/23/09 at 11:59 am

This was a small article posted in the recent issue of the magazine, and chances are it was used as a filler, good article though.

link to this comment

OrangePapers

10/23/09 at 4:06 pm

Great article. But everybody knows that T-Rexes cheat. The rules are irrelevant. Win or lose, the human would still get eaten.

link to this comment

AmericanMan

10/24/09 at 4:28 am

I enjoyed reading this. Each time I see those tiny little Tyrannosaurus Rex arms I giggle. Not out loud, but you know. Judging by the size of these things and what they were designed to do and taking into consideration those 2 big claws, one would expect atleast this estimate. Hey ! How about an estimate on the bad boys legs ? Leg press poundage ? And jaw bite - in the tons I reckon.

link to this comment

kyleb2112

10/24/09 at 5:36 pm

They'd beat you with their breath alone, I reckon.

link to this comment

Now Lets See

10/30/09 at 4:42 pm

I was wondering if any of you have ever seen a little 40lb chimpanzee in a rage. No. Hmmm, well I'll tell you about a story I read in a magazine once. They began feeding this female chimp treats when she would pull on this ring in her encloser. One day they teased her and didn't give her one. She got very upset after a few times and really yanked on that ring (which they had attached to a scale in lbs.) and
low and behold 1200 lbs registered or so the article said.
Even if it was only 800lbs, I mean with those scrawny arms she could still rip yours off. I don't know what kind of mussels a T-Rex has but I'm sure they were stronger than you think. But like others hinted to, as if he would need to use them anyway.

link to this comment

skullsrme75

11/20/09 at 10:25 pm

i think the match would be close, because t rex was evolved to live in an environment with only half the gravity we have today

Popular Tags

Science

Regular Features

The Doctor Is In with Isadora Botwinick | Weird and wild stories of the human body, health and disease
Sex Files with Susannah F. Locke | A broad view of new research and ideas in the sexiest of the hard sciences
Science Confirms the Obvious with Laura Allen | The research that makes us say "duh"