Popular depiction shows Hannibal's war elephants carrying wooden towers (howdahs) manned by archers, but a strand of scholarship dating to the late 1940s argues the African forest elephants Carthage used were physically too small or weak to carry such structures in combat.
What would resolve this Further archaeological, iconographic or zoological evidence establishing whether the African forest elephant subspecies Carthage fielded could bear a howdah's weight in combat conditions.
OpenMilitary history and zooarchaeologyWikipedia: War elephant