6 ms·

I’m not seeing how this relates to why fossils would more often be males. Can you expand?

murbard2 4y ago
> “They were more likely to do silly things, like die in tar pits,” Gower says.
dsq 4y ago
Nature creates superfluous number of males (since one male ususally has most of females, like in a pride of lions, or a sultan's harem). Therefore those unattached males, who are still too young and inexperienced to fight the old ones, wander around 'seeking their fortune', usually leading to their quick demise in all sorts of places.
- danaris 4y ago
  ...Why does it matter whether the demise was quick or slow, with the group or apart from it? They still leave the same number of bones, don't they?
  - cninja 4y ago
    The environmental conditions that are good for the formation of fossils are not the sort of conditions that are good for living a long and peaceful life. Outcast males are the ones more likely to be wandering around in those sorts of places.
  - rapind 4y ago
    I would imagine because the male bones would then be more scattered, whereas female bones more concentrated, giving you a better chance to come upon a male's bones. Not sure the speed of demise is relevant. If my kids scatter toys all of the living room, I'm much more likely to step on one or more of them, then if they were in a neat pile (speaking from experience).
    - PeterisP 4y ago
      That does not seem a reasonable exploration - all it means that we'd find female bones more rarely but when we do find them, there would be a whole cluster of them, recovering many specimens at once - it's not like paleontologists stop with "ah, we took one set of bones from here, we'll leave the rest lying around); so the total amount should still be the same.
      - rapind 4y ago
        Fair enough. Could be the size of the area, lack of resources, and bad luck until suddenly a jackpot? For all I know, maybe the bones at camp are used to make soup… /shrug
  - jmopp 4y ago
    An animal dying suddenly in a landslide would be more likely to leave a fossil than one who has been killed and eaten.
  - Sharlin 4y ago
    Fossilization is really rare and the conditions that enable fossilization usually involve being quickly buried under something.
- gumby 4y ago
  > Nature creates superfluous number of males A rather astounding statement. Selective pressure should result a ratio appropriate for a given species of plant or animal. It’s not my field, but I haven’t seen any literature suggesting any such thing, nor do I know of any country full of sultans.
  - autosharp 4y ago
    E.g. most chickens (about 2/3) that come out of their egg are male. But a flock only allows maybe 1 adult male for every 5 females, with the surplus murdered by other chickens. So almost all male chickens are superfluous in that sense. It is still selective pressure which makes chickens have 'too many' males, because apparently those chickens/flocks have created more of themselves. Same for lions, btw, although I don't know about their sex' birthrates.
    - rybosworld 4y ago
      Birth sex ratio of chickens is naturally 1:1. You can do weird things with temperature to affect those birth rates, but the ratio will not reach as high as 2:1 as far as I know.
    - gumby 4y ago
      > Same for lions, btw, although I don't know about their sex' birthrates. If you don't know the rate how can you say it's true? By definition there is some sort of distribution of male/female cubs and there is presumably some sort of distribution of pack sizes. But apart from the victorian-inspired documentaries that talk about juvenile male ronins being chased from the pack I don't really know the dynamics, and I doubt anyone but a specialized community does. Where I live in Palo Alto the distribution of lone mountain lions that show up in town seems, anecdotally, to be predominantly female. Humans are a good example: slightly more males are born but within the range of about 20-50 years of age, the sex ratio is 1:1. Humans have been basically* monogamous throughout recorded history and for whatever reasons that might be it would select for this birth ratio wouldn't it. * Sure, there are plenty (well, a few percent) of kids whose father is not the male in a given hetero "couple" but it's the couple phenomenon itself that matters here.

> “They were more likely to do silly things, like die in tar pits,” Gower says.

dsq 4y ago

Nature creates superfluous number of males (since one male ususally has most of females, like in a pride of lions, or a sultan's harem). Therefore those unattached males, who are still too young and inexperienced to fight the old ones, wander around 'seeking their fortune', usually leading to their quick demise in all sorts of places.

danaris 4y ago
...Why does it matter whether the demise was quick or slow, with the group or apart from it? They still leave the same number of bones, don't they?
- cninja 4y ago
  The environmental conditions that are good for the formation of fossils are not the sort of conditions that are good for living a long and peaceful life. Outcast males are the ones more likely to be wandering around in those sorts of places.
- rapind 4y ago
  I would imagine because the male bones would then be more scattered, whereas female bones more concentrated, giving you a better chance to come upon a male's bones. Not sure the speed of demise is relevant. If my kids scatter toys all of the living room, I'm much more likely to step on one or more of them, then if they were in a neat pile (speaking from experience).
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    That does not seem a reasonable exploration - all it means that we'd find female bones more rarely but when we do find them, there would be a whole cluster of them, recovering many specimens at once - it's not like paleontologists stop with "ah, we took one set of bones from here, we'll leave the rest lying around); so the total amount should still be the same.
    - rapind 4y ago
      Fair enough. Could be the size of the area, lack of resources, and bad luck until suddenly a jackpot? For all I know, maybe the bones at camp are used to make soup… /shrug
- jmopp 4y ago
  An animal dying suddenly in a landslide would be more likely to leave a fossil than one who has been killed and eaten.
- Sharlin 4y ago
  Fossilization is really rare and the conditions that enable fossilization usually involve being quickly buried under something.
gumby 4y ago
> Nature creates superfluous number of males A rather astounding statement. Selective pressure should result a ratio appropriate for a given species of plant or animal. It’s not my field, but I haven’t seen any literature suggesting any such thing, nor do I know of any country full of sultans.
- autosharp 4y ago
  E.g. most chickens (about 2/3) that come out of their egg are male. But a flock only allows maybe 1 adult male for every 5 females, with the surplus murdered by other chickens. So almost all male chickens are superfluous in that sense. It is still selective pressure which makes chickens have 'too many' males, because apparently those chickens/flocks have created more of themselves. Same for lions, btw, although I don't know about their sex' birthrates.
  - rybosworld 4y ago
    Birth sex ratio of chickens is naturally 1:1. You can do weird things with temperature to affect those birth rates, but the ratio will not reach as high as 2:1 as far as I know.
  - gumby 4y ago
    > Same for lions, btw, although I don't know about their sex' birthrates. If you don't know the rate how can you say it's true? By definition there is some sort of distribution of male/female cubs and there is presumably some sort of distribution of pack sizes. But apart from the victorian-inspired documentaries that talk about juvenile male ronins being chased from the pack I don't really know the dynamics, and I doubt anyone but a specialized community does. Where I live in Palo Alto the distribution of lone mountain lions that show up in town seems, anecdotally, to be predominantly female. Humans are a good example: slightly more males are born but within the range of about 20-50 years of age, the sex ratio is 1:1. Humans have been basically* monogamous throughout recorded history and for whatever reasons that might be it would select for this birth ratio wouldn't it. * Sure, there are plenty (well, a few percent) of kids whose father is not the male in a given hetero "couple" but it's the couple phenomenon itself that matters here.