Bite me: New study of dinosaur scars sheds light on prehistoric, in-your-face battles for dominance

Whether it was establishing their territory or getting in good with the ladies, male tyrannosaurs got right up in each other's faces during prehistoric clashes of epic proportions.

At least, that's a hypothesis being put forward by a team of Alberta paleontologists that studied 202 tyrannosaurid skull specimens featuring 324 bite marks and battle scars.

"Basically these animals were biting each other on the face," said Caleb Brown, co-author of a recent study and a curator at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alta.

That, in itself, isn't unheard of, Brown told CBC's Edmonton AM on Thursday. But the huge number of specimens both  confirmed this theory and allowed certain patterns to emerge, such as the significant absence of scars on the smallest tyrannosaurs.

"The babies and the juveniles had no bite marks," he said.

"We're thinking that one hypothesis that explains this is that they didn't start doing this behaviour until they reached sexual maturity. So they were competing with rivals or trying to impress members of the opposite sex."

The study, published Sept. 6 in the journal Paleobiology, noted that the position and orientation of the facial scars was consistent across tyrannosaurid species, which suggested that the bites were inflicted in repeated conflicts — "likely posturing and sizing each other up, then trying to grab each other's heads between their jaws," Brown explained in an email.