Your first point claims that Rothschild (2013) did not give enough credit to the variability of tyrannosaurid tooth marks. It is not sufficient to simply say that tooth marks are quite variable, you need to address the following specific arguments from his paper:
- Some holes occur in isolation on the middle of surfaces, with no marks nearby that could be attributed to the neighbouring teeth (Rothschild 2013: 215).
- On "Sir William", a pair of scrape marks on the dentary are not parallel, suggesting that the sharp objects responsible were not in a fixed position relative to each other, unlike teeth attached to a jaw would be (Rothschild 2013: 215).
- The isolated puncture hole in the surangular of MOR 980 is additionally said to be too big to have been created by a T. rex tooth (Rothschild 2013: 216, and fig. 10.2).
How do you explain each of these observations as consistent with tooth marks?
Your second point claims that T. rex lacked the range of movement necessary use their claws as weapons. However, Carpenter's work only demonstrated that T. rex forelimbs could not scratch their own faces, and does not rule out use against other individuals at very close range. You also point out that T. rex was unable to jump, but the kicking posture reconstructed by Rothschild (2013: fig. 10.6) depicts the attacker standing on one leg, not jumping. Again, the issue of striking range is very dependent on how we assume the individuals were positioned relative to each other. For example, imagine two tyrannosaurs are fighting over some food. If one individual lowers its face to the ground to take the food, it is suddenly much easier for the other individual to kick or step on its opponent's face without needing to jump, or even raise the leg much higher than it would during ordinary locomotion.
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