The New York Times normally treats its readers with respect. We are not stupid, but the article below is click-bait masquerading as a story.
The title Why Male Mammoths Were Inclined to Die in Lots of "Silly Ways" is designed as a hook, and isn't even answered in the story.
After reading this "article" you have no new information about the why - the ostentatious reason for the article.
In Reality: What the researchers were trying to determine was - if Mammoth herds were like contemporary elephant herds and run by dominate females.
In contemporary elephant herds, males are run off as they mature from juveniles to adults. And, as information about the topology is held in the collective memory of the herd - young male elephants are overwhelmingly more like to die due to accidents like cliffs, rivers that rise annually, swamps and other dangers that can be learned by a group, but not by individuals.
The researchers made the assumption that if Mammoth herds were the same, them the overwhelming number of Mammoth accidents (and therefore fossilized skeletons) would be male. That is, in fact, what they discovered to prove their theory.
They were not trying to uncover why male mammoths were inclined to die in silly ways.
Good grief