
Why Fossils Are Mostly Male - mellowhype
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fossil-record-prefers-males
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hirundo
> [Male wooly mammoths] were more likely to do silly things, like die in tar
> pits

Apparently, across many mammalian species, males are more likely to take risks
and explore than females. This seems to be good evidence that not all gendered
behavior is socialized. That would seem to be a silly straw man argument to
knock down, if it were not so widely held.

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eloff
It is a silly straw man argument that should be knocked down. Society has
completely lost it trying to ignore science and claim that there's no
biological differences between genders. It's a joke if you're even slightly
educated on the subject.

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mcv
Is anyone claiming that there are no biological differences between genders?
It's very blatantly obvious that there are. I think the idea that many people
oppose, is that the existence of some biological differences justifies other
social differences.

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weego
Yes, unfortunately there are a number of people, some in positions of power
and authority over some sporting bodies, that believe there is no meaningful
difference between sexes.

The most notable result I've seen is a transgender (recently transitioned) MMA
fighter fracturing the skull of an opponent in an appallingly one sided and
brutal fight.

Denying the most basic facts of hormone effects (muscle and bone density
effects of testosterone and then the bone density sparing effects of estrogen)
that have not even been questioned for decades is now unfortunately a thing.

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StavrosK
Why was the fighter even allowed to compete in the new league? Do you have a
reference for the fight?

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leereeves
Fallon Fox vs Tamikka Brents

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StavrosK
Thanks, that was brutal.

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andonisus
> "This has less to do with misogyny"

How did they shoehorn in sexism into an article about animals? This has
nothing to do with misogyny because animals are incapable of reason.

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daveFNbuck
The sexism would be coming from the people collecting fossils and curating the
museums. Later in the article they mention that human biases affect the gender
ratios of collections of extant organisms (although not for sexist reasons) so
it's not a completely absurd thing to rule out.

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andonisus
So the argument would be the the (male) paleontologists, museum curators, etc.
had such a burning hatred for women that they chose male specimens to
cultivate and display?

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krastanov
Please do not flame the discussion with strawmans. This is a very uncharitable
interpretation of what OP wrote. It is not about hatred, it is about minor
subconscious preferences that _if_ they exist, the can cause noticeable
effects in aggregate.

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andonisus
What I wrote is not a strawman, it is the definition of misogyny. Perhaps you
are conflating this with sexism. The article used the word misogyny, so that
is what I am using.

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daveFNbuck
The article said there was no misogyny. My comment also said that. No one is
arguing that people were being driven by misogyny.

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andonisus
The article starts by mentioning "less to do with misogyny".

My comment is about sexism, specifically misogyny (as used by the article).

You reply to my comment taking about how it can be plausible that it is
misogyny.

I believe we are talking about misogyny.

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daveFNbuck
My comment was that it's not completely absurd to rule out sexism because
human biases have affected the gender composition of similar collections.
That's pretty far from making a specific argument about how misogyny is
involved.

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AstralStorm
It is completely absurd as you have absolutely less than zero evidence to
support it has occurred.

The main problem here is the binomial distribution, not any other kind of
bias.

Fossils are rare enough that even a small change in behavior could really
stack the deck.

Do you think the was perhaps a child bias in Homo fossils caused by curators?
(They're overrepresented probably for obvious reasons.)

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daveFNbuck
If there is less than zero evidence to support that something happened, isn't
that an appropriate time to rule it out?

Everyone agrees that this is not due to sexism. What's the problem with saying
so in an article?

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londons_explore
This article misses some steps...

Just because a male might be likely to go do something risky and die young,
that wouldn't explain more male fossils. After all, the female that didn't do
something risky will also die. All things die.

Are they trying to claim that females who die are less likley to turn into
fossils, perhaps because of the locations the deaths occurred in?

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shantly
Fossilization of bone generally requires animals to die such that they're
buried pretty quickly. The swampier parts of swamps, river banks, tar pits,
that sort of thing. Risky areas for megafauna, not places they're going to be,
say, sleeping if they can avoid it. The exceptions are when there were, for
example, flash floods that quickly swept & covered ordinarily-safe-and-fertile
flood plains, or when predators dragged carcasses to such places for whatever
reason (big crocodiles, maybe), volcanic eruptions, stuff like that. A large
land animal killed _not_ by some disaster, that ended up fossilized, probably
didn't die of old age or of predation by something common to the animal's
preferred habitat, unless they were (for example) swamp dwellers to begin
with.

[edit]

> Are they trying to claim that females who die are less likley to turn into
> fossils, perhaps because of the locations the deaths occurred in?

Yes, I think that's it.

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_red
Strange that they haven't considered chemical reasons: Males have more iron /
more hemoglobin...perhaps male bones are just more likely to fossilize for
some chemical reason(s)?

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ASalazarMX
There wouldn't be small fossils if blood volume was that important to bone
fossilization.

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

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ASalazarMX
The article mentions 25% of fossils are female. Females would need 75% less
bone mass to account for that.

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moate
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.

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ASalazarMX
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.

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gameswithgo
I don't understand the argument. All mammoths die.

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shantly
1) location of death (or final resting place, anyway) matters a ton for
likelihood of fossilization,

2) not all animals die in the same places,

3) if sex has an influence on the distribution of likelihood of dying (or
ending up in—water carries corpses, predators and carrion-eaters may drag
them) in fossilization-friendly locations, we'd expect to see a difference in
the rates of fossil discovers of that species by sex, different from whatever
actual distribution there was of male & female in the original population.

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hsnewman
Could females be eaten more so there is less remains?

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Majestic121
Most animals don't eat bone though

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cjdrake
The patriarchy strikes again.

