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Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

Seems dangerous to infer too much about the general behavior of entire species based on the observed behavior captured in two individuals at the moment they were being entombed in the lava flow from a volcanic eruption.

Like assuming that based on some skeletons found under a volcanic ash flow that the normal behavior of humans was running with your hands in the air and screaming really loudly.

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This single group of humans almost always assumed the fetal position. Fortunately we were able to get a glimpse of this because they were captured in a lava flow. We may never know why they did that.

Its the position you assume when in extreme pain.

That’s the joke

No, I think they could be onto something :)

It was a mud flow. It likely came on extremely fast while they were distracted by their life and death struggle, and not necessarily during a dramatic eruption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahar

Additionally, it's a pretty solid prior to assume that, when we find rapidly forming fossils like this, the behaviors they capture were common behaviors. Fossil formation is rare, so a fossil capturing a rare behavior is pretty darn unlikely. A behavior would have to be ellicted many, many times to have a likely chance of being preserved in a fossil.

Surely they exist, and this could be one of them, but until we find evidence to the contrary our best guess should be that this was a common behavior.

This drives me mad about these sciences. They seemingly get captured by the PR need to sell a digestible narrative.

I appreciate if they want to posit ideas, but so often there’s this tone of absoluteness to them.

I wonder if part of it is just the desire to make one’s discipline more exciting.

You don't think that has more to do with science reporting?

It is due to science reporting, which is in an eternal crisis. It can probably never catch up with the state of the arts.

In this specific case the assumption is for the entire Mammalia class rather than just species

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