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Comment by danaris | Hacker News Reader

...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?

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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).

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.

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

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.

An animal dying suddenly in a landslide would be more likely to leave a fossil than one who has been killed and eaten.

Fossilization is really rare and the conditions that enable fossilization usually involve being quickly buried under something.

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