Woolly mammoths used to be very abundant on our planet. Between 1750 and 1917, trade in mammoth ivory prospered over a wide geographical region, yielding an estimated 96,000 mammoth tusks. It is estimated that about 5 million mammoths lived in just a small portion of northern Siberia. Ivory gathered from that region provided more than half the world’s supply for making piano keys, billiard balls and white chess-men. Hundreds of millions of mammoths were suddenly killed. Remains were found all across Northern Russia from the Urals to the Bering Strait and even on the American continent (Alaska and Yukon).
In 1797 the body of a mammoth, with flesh, skin, and hair, was found in northeastern Siberia, and since then the bodies of other mammoths have been unearthed from the frozen ground. The flesh had the appearance of freshly frozen beef. It was edible, and wolves and sledge dogs fed on it without harm. But the story that mammoth steaks were served up to the Explorers’ Club 47th Annual Dinner on January 17th 1951 is wholly without substance, as was shown by Kathryn Lindskoog in her book Fakes, Frauds, & Other Malarkey. (Jan. 1993)
What happened to all these creatures? What event of nature fell upon them so suddenly that they were flash-frozen, and have remained in that condition in the permafrost regions ever since? This event challenges our uniformitarian vision of history where the progress of life on our planet is considered a linear process, increasing day after day, undisturbed by any major external setback. Numerous theories have been proposed over the last two centuries to explain the demise of the woolly mammoths – such as them being caught in frozen rivers, victims of over-hunting, covered by hail storms, buried in mudslides, fallen in ice crevasses, caught by the ice age. But none of these are sufficient to explain this mass extinction.
Mammoth remains are found piled up with other animals, like tiger, antelope, camel, horse, reindeer, giant beaver, giant ox, musk sheep, musk ox, donkey, badger, ibex, woolly rhinoceros, fox, giant bison, lynx, leopard, wolverine, hare, lion, elk, giant wolf, ground squirrel, cave hyena, bear, and many types of birds. Most of those animals could not survive an arctic climate. This is a clear indication that woolly mammoths were not polar creatures. According to several accounts, food was also found in the mouths of the frozen mammoths. This food, consisting mainly of buttercups, had been cropped but not chewed or swallowed, thereby declaring the complete suddenness of the event.
Whitley, writing in the Journal of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain in 1910, said, “Microscopic examination of the skin showed red blood corpuscles, which was a proof of sudden death. But the puzzle remained to account for the sudden freezing up of this large mass of flesh so as to preserve it for future ages.” More recently, in fact in 2013, a female mammoth in pristine condition was found on the Lyakhovsky Islands in Siberia. Interestingly, when scientists poked at the mammoth’s frozen remains with an ice pick, blood started to flow. Given that blood starts to coagulate only a few minutes after death, this suggests that the woolly mammoths froze so quickly that their blood didn’t have time to coagulate. And so the mystery deepens.
Based on all this evidence we are left with only one conclusion. An event occurred very suddenly whereby the temperature fell precipitously, flash-freezing the mammoths as they were standing, They were not aware that anything was about to happen. After this event, the temperate region where they lived changed dramatically into permafrost, the temperature never rising above freezing point thereafter. According to experts, for this sudden freezing to occur inside the warm body (96.6°F for elephants) of woolly mammoths who had a thick layer of fat and hair, they would have to have been subjected to extremely low temperatures: -175F (-115°C). Temperatures in Siberia, which was under a temperate climate at the time, were around 60F, means that the temperature dropped from +60F to -175, which is a 235F (130°C) temperature drop within a few hours.
This is the only mechanism available to us to explain HOW it happened. But this immediately causes us to ask WHY it happened, and WHAT CAUSED IT to happen. Nothing known to science can explain how this came about. No meteorological event is known whereby such sudden freezing conditions can arise. In the 2004 science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow Dennis Quaid stars as Professor Adrian Hall, a paleoclimatologist fighting to save the world from a second ice age and all the natural disasters that herald it: floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes to name but a few. Graphically shown in the film is what happens if a section of the earth is opened up to outer space, so that temperatures fall in the manner quoted above. People become frozen statues within a couple of minutes. From this point of view the film is excellent because it shows very clearly the mechanism by which the mammoths were frozen. But the film loses its credibility in respect of the stated mechanism by which the sky can open up to outer space. The film is worth watching.
The solution may only be found by turning to astronomy, namely the impact of a huge comet, travelling at about 20 miles per second, striking the earth at a glancing angle. The resulting explosion would obliterate part of the earth’s atmosphere, sending it into outer space faster than the escape velocity, thereby creating an airless funnel. The earth at the base of this funnel would suddenly experience the cold of outer space for a brief period until the surrounding atmosphere moved back to fill the void. This would be sufficient to flash-freeze the mammoths. But other conditions would have to prevail in order to create a perma-frost region to replace the temperate zone in which the mammoths were feeding. This is best left to another posting.
As to the TIMING of this event, let me conclude with a fictional tale. In the large public area of Paddington station in London a considerable number of people suddenly fell to the ground in an unconscious state. It was noticed that only those within a well-defined circular patch succumbed to this event, and although they later revived unhurt, the event caused considerable concern. DCI Williams of Scotland Yard was there in charge of the investigation, and he had before him Jenny, a reporter from Daily News, Mr Franklin and his teenage son James. Williams was trying to find the exact TIME in which the event happened.
Williams. YOU said it was twenty to ten?
Jenny. Yes, on arrival I asked the station master, and that’s what he said.
Williams. But YOU insist it was AFTER ten o’clock?
Franklin. Oh Yes. I was waiting to collect James from the train from Reading, which was due to arrive at 10.15, but in fact came a few minutes early.
Williams. Well, you can’t BOTH be right.
Franklin. But I was actually there and witnessed it. The reporter only arrived later.
Jenny. I accept that, but the station master seemed absolutely certain when I questioned him.
James. I think you were BOTH right.
Williams. Oh? . . .How can that be?
James. The station master said twenty two ten. He was using a 24 hour clock. In other words he meant ten past ten, the same as Dad.
Uniformitarians use a clock of their own making, and it not only gives the wrong time by half an hour (as in my story) but by many thousands of years according to the ice ages which they see as the timing of the mammoth event. But should they use the logic of James, they would learn to read time correctly. The mammoths died during the colossal upheaval that occurred during the Flood of Noah’s day, some 4,300 years ago.
