If it was the left gear...
wouldn't it be safe to assume that we'd have heard about it as a "major" find in the investigation?
Seems like they'd be able to run some test on it to determine if it had been exposed over a longer duration to elevated temperatures (in the well as the "burn through" occurred) rather than a sudden, shorter term exposure to the temps after the chassis failure.
I dunno anything about tempering metals though, that just seems like a common sense observation.
Tom?
MrPex