The Mammoth Mystery

The most common view is that the mammoths did not survive a sudden and severe climatic change. Let us consider some of the known facts regarding the demise of these great beasts.

1 - The evidence for widespread mammoth deaths involves vast regions of the polar-area of the northern hemisphere. One news article states:

“All over the frozen northern parts of Siberia and Canada we find the frozen carcasses of hundreds of thousands of large mammal species. These are mainly mammoths, but also [there are] wooly rhinos and other creatures of this kind.”

In some areas the tusks of the mammoths protruded (like tombstones) so profusely from the frozen tundra that it generated trade in fossil ivory for centuries, extending all the way to China.

2 - It is obvious that the mammoth herds died quite rapidly; they were, so to speak, quick-frozen. James D. Dana, who served as Professor of Natural History and Geology at Yale, in his renowned work, A Manual of Geology, wrote that “the encasing in ice of huge Elephants, and the perfect preservation of the flesh, shows that the cold finally became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter’s night, and knew no relenting afterwards” (Price, p. 132 – orig. emp.).

Sir Henry Howorth, a 19th century archaeologist, assembled a massive amount of material concerning the mammoth graveyards. Incidentally, Howorth was rather hostile toward Christianity. Anyway, he attributed the quick-freeze to a “change of climate” that “must have been sudden, and must also have been continental” (p. 94).

The freeze occurred so rapidly that the bodies of these huge beasts did not have time to decompose. There have been numerous cases where the flesh of mammoths was so well-preserved that the meat was still edible by bears and wolves.

In 1901 a mammoth carcass was found so well-preserved that there were food fragments, as yet unswallowed, in its mouth. Moreover, there was more than twenty pounds of vegetation still in the stomach cavity – some ofwhich was not yet decayed. The animal had died and been frozen in virtually a matter of hours (Dillow, pp. 319-20).

3 - Another amazing revelation amidst these discoveries is the fact that the stomach content of some of these creatures indicated they had been grazing on vegetation that grows only in warm regions, yet they were quite near the north pole. Scientists were mystified.

by WAYNE JACKSON