4 ms·

I would assume bone structure is generally bigger and stronger, lasting longer

• moate 7y ago
  I can't imagine there's such substantial sexual diamorphism across all species to account for that. How much bigger/stronger would bones need to be for this to hold true? Also, what about the variance between species? Hypothetically, would that then go Male Large Dino > Female Large Dino > Male Medium Dino > Female Medium Dino...? We'd expect to see more females of large dinos than any medium males in that case.
• ASalazarMX 7y ago
  The article mentions 25% of fossils are female. Females would need 75% less bone mass to account for that.
  • moate 7y ago
    That's not quite how the math works. Assuming there was a size/mass minimum for fossilization, and that we expected that to be the only qualifier for fossil occurrence, we'd just need to expect X% of species to exhibit sexual dimorphism depending on how frequently we see males&females of the same species. For example, if you needed a bone to weigh 5kg/meter and males are 5kg/meter but females are 4.5kg/meter then you'd expect to see a very low number of females even though they're only 10% smaller. Obviously none of this is the case, and this isn't the deciding factor on why it's happening. Just pointing out where you missed things slightly.
    • ASalazarMX 7y ago
      You're right, but that doesn't fit in a snarky one-liner. If we were serious about this bone mass minimum, we'd need to consider why there are fossils of smaller animals, or big but hollow-boned animals. That's a rabbit hole with many hypothetical variables.