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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

Why would male DNA hold up better when the only difference is the sex chromosomes. They are chemically made from the same material.

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I think that's unnecessarily dismissive. Males do tend to have higher bone density among other things. Such things could contribute to the DNA being better preserved. I think it's a perfectly valid question in our layman conversation, even though it's certainly something the researchers of this field have already thought about.

I wasn't being dismissive, just inquisitive. Are denser bones able to preserve DNA better from decay? We don't typically need DNA to be able to tell the sex of a fossil skeleton, the size and shape of the fossils alone give that away. Perhaps it is the case that the bones themselves survive better as fossils as a result of the added density. But then, I'm also curious about the conditions necessary for a fossil to be preserved at all, as the vast majority of dead creatures gets reabsorbed indistinguishably back into the soil.

In mammals. In reptiles and fish it's typically the female that's larger.

Maybe because they are more likely to die younger—and the younger, stronger body preserves better?

No idea, just saying it's a possible explanation along with all their other guesses.

I don't get the urge for when a community has been stumped studying something for multiple years and you've just heard about it 5 minutes ago to chime in and ask "I wonder if they've thought of this yet?".

Like, how likely do you really think it is that the reason they haven't figured it out is because it simply never occurred to them to investigate your reason?

Not sure on that..

I've been in a tech meeting with 10 devs (about 150 years exp) trying to solve a problem for days. The founder of the company (a non dev, but smart guy) walked in at one point and said. What if we just did X instead. We all collectively slapped our heads and tada solved it.

Someone's gotta guess. A fresh pair of eyes can bring insight.

That's what you have students for.

It seems quite possible for someone with a different background might have an insight missed by hundreds of people with very similar academic backgrounds.

In particular when the test population is so different from the expected living population and experts have no explanation, some kind of non-linear thinking is likely going to be needed.

> I don't get the urge

I don’t get what you don’t get. Engaging one’s brain is the best way to understand the shape of a problem.

And yes, that involves asking “basic” questions.

This ciding you do here assumes bad faith from the person asking the question. Some people ask questions because they want to know the answer, not to demonstrate how much better they are than a whole field or whatever you are assuming here.

> Like, how likely do you really think it is that the reason they haven't figured it out

Who cares how likely is it? Are we only allowed to ask questions which have not been studied before?

If it has been studied before: great! It is much more likely one can just read answers in their paper.

> "I wonder if they've thought of this yet?"

The comment doesn't say that.

> never occurred to them to investigate your reason?

The comment doesn't say that.

Group think is real, I have definitely entered consulting gigs in a new topic and asked questions that haven’t been asked before by a group working on something for a long time…

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