Original subject: My last post on Mammoths
Woolly Mammoths:
Evidence of Catastrophe?
Sue Bishop
Philip Burns
Select one:
a.. Woolly Mammoth Remains: Catastrophic Origins?, by Sue Bishop
b.. Woolly Mammoths: Suited for Cold?, by Philip R. Burns
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Woolly Mammoths Remains: Catastrophic Origins?
By Sue Bishop
Since Ted Holden has repeatedly insisted that the mammoth whose remains were
found in Siberia in 1901 was preserved by some great catastrophe as
described in Velikovsky's books, I decided to research the topic. I found
several books on the subject, including the original book written by one of
the scientists who actually examined, preserved and transported the mammoth
remains from Siberia.
Preservation of the mammoth remains was somewhat different than has been
imagined by the uninformed. The mammoths were 'mummified', a process that is
quite easily done in a cold environment. Guthrie compares it to the process
that packaged meat undergoes in a freezer.
The following is from Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe by Guthrie:
"The word mummy has long been used to describe carcasses preserved in
northern permafrost. Some have objected to this usage on the basis that
preservation by freezing is unlike 'real' mummification of an embalmed or
dried corpse. However, frozen carcasses, like Dima and Blue Babe, (two well
preserved carcasses described in his book, Dima is a baby mammoth, Blue Babe
is a bison) are indeed desiccated and fully deserve to be called mummies."
(Guthrie 1990)
"Underground frost mummification should not be confused with
freeze-drying, which occurs when a body is frozen and moisture is removed by
sublimation, a process accelerated by a partial vacuum. ... I have often
freeze-dried items, sometimes inadvertently, during our long Alaskan
winters, where the temperature seldom rises above freezing for eight months
of the year." (Guthrie 1990)
"However, the desiccation of fossil mummies is quite different than
freeze-drying. Moisture contained in a buried carcass is not released to the
atmosphere but is crystallized in place, in ice lenses around the mummy.
This process is more comparable to tightly wrapped food left too long in a
freezer. When a stew is first frozen, it swells to a somewhat larger size,
bulging the sealed plastic container. The longer it stays in the freezer,
month after month, the more the moisture begins to separate, forming ice
crystals inside the container. The stew itself shrinks and desiccates. Year
follows year, and the stew becomes more and more desiccated, as ice
segregates from it. Eventually, the stew has become a shriveled, dehydrated
block; unlike freeze-drying in which the object theoretically retains its
original form, the stew is shrunken in size and surrounded by a network of
clear ice crystals. Soft tissue becomes mummified and shrunken down, looking
like a desiccated mummy dried in the sun. These two processes of cold
mummification and freeze-drying were not distinctly understood by people
unfamiliar with long winters and the back corners of deep freezers."
(Guthrie 1990)
The picture in the Sutcliffe book shows the front leg of the Berezovka
mammoth. The muscles are dried straps over the bones, quite as Guthrie
describes, looking very mummified.
As for instant freezing, as claimed by Ted Holden, there is no evidence of
that. The Berezovka mammoth shows evidence of having been buried in a
landslide, the cold mud acting as preservative and the underlying permafrost
completing the process by freezing the carcass.
E. W. Pfizenmayer was one of the scientists who actually recovered and
studied the Berezovka mammoth. I was able to obtain his book, Siberian Man
and Mammoth through interlibrary loan. It's quite interesting, the mammoth
story is only a part of his book, he also commented at length on people who
were living in Siberia at the time of the scientists' journey to get to the
site of the mammoth.
Pfizenmayer says about the mammoth:
"Baron E. von Toll, the well-known geological explore of Arctic Siberia,
who perished while leading the Russian expedition in 1903, had covered in
1890 most of the sites of previous finds of mammoth and rhinoceros bodies in
carrying out his professional investigations. In doing so he had established
that the mammoth found by Adams in 1799 buried at the mouth of the Lena in a
crevice of a cliff from 200 to 260 feet high, and sent by him to St.
Petersberg, had been frozen in a bank of diluvial ice on the slope of the
river. This ice bank was not (as Adams believed and stated in his
description of the site of the find) the remains of the old drift-ice whose
crevices had been filled with mud. The fissures in the bank of diluvial ice
on the Lena, which was far bigger than ours, had, according to Toll's
findings, gradually filled with earth from the top downwards, and its upper
surface covered with alluvial soil to such an extent that a fair number of
the tundra plants were able to take root on it.
"Toll concluded that this particular Siberian ice was in no case recent,
but was the remains of diluvial inland ice, which once covered the whole
world, and then was gradually overlaid with earth, surviving to this day in
the Arctic regions in ice-banks of varying extent.
"Our investigations confirmed his opinion. They proved that the animal had
been preserved in the same way as Adams's mammoth, according to Toll, had
been. In both cases the bodies had been enbedded in fissures of the diluvial
inland ice. Then when the temperature fell the mud disappeared and the ice
in which they were fast frozen had kept them, complete with their soft
parts, in a state a preservation through the ages.
"Before I arrived at the site, Herz had partially dug away the hill of
earth round the body, and so both the forefeet and the hind feet were
exposed. These lay under the body so that it rested on them. When one looked
at the body one had the impression that it must have suddenly fallen into an
unexpected fissure in the ice, which it probably came across in its
wanderings, and which may have been covered with a layer of plant-bearing
mould. After its fall the unlucky animal must have tried to get out of its
hopeless position, for the right forefoot was doubled up and the left
stretched forward as if it had struggled to rise. But its strength had
apparently not been up to it, for when we dug it out still farther we found
that in its fall it had not only broken several bones, but had been almost
completely buried by the falls of earth which tumbled in on it, so that it
had suffocated.
"Its death must have occurred very quickly after its fall, for we found
half-chewed food still in its mouth, between the back teeth and on its
tongue, which was in good preservation. The food consisted of leaves and
grasses, some of the later carrying seeds. We could tell from these that the
mammoth must have come to its miserable end in the autumn."
Also:
"Lapparent attributes the extinction of the mammoth to a gradual increase
in cold and a decrease in the supply of food, rather than to a cataclysmic
flood." (Guthrie 1990)
"...Quackenbush (1909) concluded that the partial mammoth mummy from
Eschscholtz Bay, Alaska, was so deteriorated as to exclude 'sudden fall in
temperature" theories...'" (Guthrie 1990)
I am still doing research on Mammoth diet and climate at the time of the
burial of the Berezovka mammoth. Types of data being studied, stomach and
mouth contents of the said mammoth, stomach contents of other mammoths
found. Lake bottom sediment cores, showing pollen and vegetation over the
last 10,000 years. Comments by Guthrie on how the climatic changes of the
ice age affected the ratio of edible vegetation from then to present.
Estimation of snow depths on the Mammoth Slope are also being covered and
have a large bearing on extinction of the mammoth and other large Ice Age
mammals.
Recent Mammoths
Ted keeps trying to date mammoths within the last 3000 years. In my research
I found absolutely nothing that was dated at that time period. The following
is from On the Track of the Ice Age Mammals by Sutcliffe:
"The absolute age in years of the frozen carcasses was for a long time a
subject of speculation. During recent years, with the availability of Carbon
14 dating, the exact age of many of them has become known, with surprising
results. Their ages fall into two main groups, one ranging in age from
45,000 years to 30,000 years and a smaller number of remains from 14-11,000
years old.
"Although skeletal remains lacking soft parts are known from the period
30-12,000 years ago, there is very little carcass material of this age. A
tendon on a 22,000-years-old bone of a lion from Alaska is one of the rare
examples. As we have already seen, this intervening period was a time of
massive glacial advance, the ice sheets in the northern hemisphere expanding
to their maximum extent about 18,000 years ago. There were minor, more
temperate periods from about 45-25,000 years ago and about 12-11,000 years
ago. It was apparently during these ameliorations that most of the known
carcasses became frozen. This appears to be a climate-related depositional
phenomenon, related to the amount of available water (which reached its
minimum at times of glacial advance) and does not reflect an absence of
mammoths from the areas in question. Under cold arid conditions, with little
moisture to supply mudflows, carcasses would have tended ultimately to rot
on the surface with only the bones surviving for potential fossilization.
Under moister conditions summer mudflows could rapidly have covered
carcasses lying in their paths, which became permanently frozen when the
permafrost level rose above them the following winter."
Mammoth Carcass Radiocarbon Dates
Earlier Age Group
Siberia
Adams (Lena River) Mammoth, 1799 36,000-37,000 years
Beresovka mammoth, 1900 more than 39,000
Shandrin mammoth, 1971 42,000 years
River Indigirka woolly rhino 38,000 years
Selerikan horse, 1968 35,000-40,000
'Dima', 1977 40,000
Khatanga mammoth, 1977 more than 50,000
Alaska
Fairbanks, mammoth hair 32,000-34,000
Fairbanks, bison, 1951 31,000
Fairbanks, bison, 1979 36,000
Later Age Group
Siberia
Taimyr Peninsula mammoth, 1948 11,500
River Berelekh mammoth remains, 1970 12,000
Yuribemammoth, 1979 9,700
Alaska
Fairbanks, mammoth 15,400
Fairbanks, another bison 12,000
Fairbanks, hoof of horse, 1981 17,200
Fairbanks, musk ox 17,000
NOTE: The Beresovka mammoth is the one that Ted kept claiming was 'instantly
frozen' by catastrophe. This is totally untrue, according to the scientists
who did the actual research in 1900.
References
Sutcliffe, Anthony J., On the Track of the Ice Age Mammals, Harvard
University Press, 1985.
Guthrie, R. Dale. Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe, 1990, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill.
Pfizenmayer, E. W., Siberian Man and Mammoth, 1939. Blackie and Son, London
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Woolly Mammoths: Suited for Cold?
By Philip R. Burns
medved wrote:
Again, the basic misunderstanding. As I see it, the question regarding
mammoths in the Liakhovs, Novo-Sibirsk etc. is not whether the handful of
preserved specimens we find were frozen, petrified, mummified, are in
suspended animation etc. etc. That may be interesting in its own way, but is
a sort of a diversion.
The question is, how given anything like the standard version of Earth
history, did vast herds of such large creatures ever find food when the
entire territory is covered by ice ten months of the year? Elephants are
gluttonous; they spend most of their waking hours eating, in fact, McGowan
has stated that he does not understand how anything ever ate enough to get
bigger than elephants since there would not appear to be time in the day for
it.
Velikovsky claims that these vast herds, the remnants of which are seen in
those arctic circle island groups, were peacefully grazing on vast fields
which were in temperal zones, when the entire surface of the Earth shifted
due to one of the catastrophes he discusses, that they very quickly thus
ended up in arctic regions along with their fields, and froze to death or
otherwise died due to effects of the catastrophe itself.
Despite the efforts of several of the t.o crew, I have yet to hear another
explanation of this phenomenon which makes any sense to me.
Mr. Holden again raises some questions about the ice age in Siberia and the
presence of mammoths there. Hence, I will post my previous answer with a few
modifications.
We should start by asking: what kind of animals were these woolly mammoths
which inhabited the Siberian steppes? Were they suited to living in a cold
climate?
Yes. We determine this by examining preserved mammoth specimens. We begin by
comparing the bodies of mammoths of those of existing members of the
Elephantidae (the African Loxodonta and Asian Elephas). In comparison to
those of modern elephants, the bodies of mammoths were compressed
lengthwise. Mammoth trunks were shorter than those of modern elephants.
Mammoth ears were small, even compared to the smaller ears of today Asian
elephants (the ears of African Loxodonts are much larger). Mammoth tails
were much shorter than those of elephants.
Modern elephants do not have a thick covering of hair. Woolly mammoths were
covered with the same kind of double fur coat as we find on other large
mammals in northern climates today. The dense insulating inner coat
consisted of a fine wool. The long, shaggy outer coat (some hairs as long as
50 cm) was composed of guard hairs. It appears that the mammoth changed its
hair at the beginning of summer. This happens in many other arctic mammals
today.
In addition to the fur coat, woolly mammoths also possessed a
three-inch-thick layer of fat underneath their skin as well as an additional
fat reserve stored in a hump above the shoulders.
Most mammoths, including the Siberian varieties, were about the same size as
modern elephants or slightly smaller. Some were larger, such as the North
American Imperial Mammoth, which reached a height of fourteen to fifteen
feet (4.5 to 5 m) at the shoulder. The Siberian mammoths were smaller; about
9 feet (3 m) at the shoulder for males and 7 1/2 feet (2.5 m) for females.
Mammoth tusks also differed from those of modern elephants. Mammoth tusks
curved down to form a broad bow close to the ground. This answers the
question of how mammoths could break through ice-covered ground to look for
forage. Even assuming that the Siberian ground was frozen -- it usually was
NOT so frozen in the Pleistocene -- the mammoth could use its tusks to break
through the ice and snow. Is there any evidence that mammoths actually did
this? Yes. Wear patterns on mammoth tusks suggest that the mammoths used
their tusks as excavation tools.
All of these items indicate that the woolly mammoth was well adapted to
surviving in a cold climate. They illustrate adaptation typical of those
seen in other mammals which extend their ranges into colder climates. The
body increases in bulk while the total amount of exposed body surface
decreases (compressed body length of mammoths, short tails and trunks, dense
fur coat). There is no reason to doubt that mammoths could live in cold
climates as long there was adequate forage.
(Incidentally, even modern Asian elephants tolerate cold fairly well.
Elephants lived as far north as the Honan province in China into early
historical times (1500 B.C.). Asian elephants also lived in what is now
Syria, Iraq, and Iran. African loxodonts used to inhabit the whole of the
African continent into historic times.)
Was there adequate forage for animals the size of mammoths in the steppes?
The current climate of the subarctic Siberian steppes could not support
large herds of mammoths assuming they required a similar volume of food as
modern elephants. Much of Siberia today is covered by deeply and permanently
frozen ground known as permafrost. The existing tundra vegetation is tough,
low, slow-growing, and laced with bitter chemicals. These chemicals may have
evolved as a defense against foraging.
However, the Siberian steppes during the last ice age were not covered in
ice and snow as they are now, nor was the ground frozen. The reason is that
so much of the available water was locked up in the arctic ice pack --
primarily in North America -- that the subarctic steppes were much drier
than today. As a result, the Siberian soil thawed to a greater depth and
supported a richer variety of plant life. This included nutritious grasses.
The stomach contents of preserved mammoths indicate that they fed on such
grasses, as well as mosses, sedges, herbaceous pollens and spores, and
fragments of willow and bilberry. Some rare poppies and buttercups have also
been found in addition to small amounts of arboreal material such as larch
needles, willows, and tree bark. Such variety indicates the mammoths lived
in a variety of climates in Siberia. These ranged from dry and steppe-like
to slightly wet to swampy to arctic/alpine.
Mammoth trunk tips were bi-lobed, useful for collecting herbaceous food.
Relatively little arboreal material has been found in mammoth stomachs.
Modern elephants, in contrast, prefer an arboreal diet, and their trunk tips
are of unequal size.
The greater abundance and variety of steppe vegetation during the ice ages
explains how the steppes could support large grazing animals like mammoths.
The mammoths may also have migrated south in the winter and north in the
summer. Modern elephants are great travellers, so possibly mammoths were
too.
How old are the frozen mammoth remains from Siberia? They fall into two main
groups, one dating from about 45,000 BP to 30,000 BP and the other from
14,000 to 11,000 BP. This does not mean that mammoths were not present in
Siberia from 30,000 BP to 14,000 BP. Instead, this indicates the climatic
conditions were not right for the formation of frozen carcasses. There are
plenty of fossil bones of mammoths from 30,000 to 14,000 BP. This was a
period of massive glacial advance, resulting in extremely dry conditions in
Siberia. In these dry conditions, mammoth carcasses would tend to rot on the
surface and/or be eaten by predators. In times of glacial retreat, when the
climate was moister, summer mudflows and floods could rapidly cover
carcasses. These covered carcasses would then become permanently frozen as
the permafrost layer closed in above them during the following winter.
Was the climate warmer or colder in Siberia at the time the mammoths lived
there? Well, both. It appears that at some periods the climate was warmer,
at others it was colder. This is inferred by comparing the modern ranges of
the plants found in mammoth stomachs as well as by astronomical calculations
of temperature similar to those presented at various times in the past in
this news group. The mammoths thrived in either case. The determinative
factor was the decreased moisture so that the ground did not become
permanently frozen as it is today. As a result, the "mammoth steppe" biome,
comprised of grasses, succulent herbs, and wormwood, thrived. This biome
disappeared around 9000 BP except for some small patches. It was replaced by
the current boggy tundra vegetation and permafrost. The mammoths, having
lost their source of food, disappeared in Siberia at about the same time. It
is possible that predation by man was also partly responsible. The earliest
human remains in Siberia date from the end of the last ice age.
What caused the ice ages? There have been many explanations proposed, none
of which appears to be solely adequate. These include:
1.. Variations in the earth's orbital characteristics (angle of the
ecliptic, eccentricity of the orbit, precession of the equinoxes). While
this is sometimes touted as being "the" explanation of the ice ages, it
cannot be the sole explanation since there have been long periods without
glaciation during which Earth's orbital elements matched those of recent
glacial periods. The patterns of ice advance and retreat DURING an ice age
do seem to track the variations in orbital characteristics.
2.. Excessive volcanic activity -- perhaps resulting from impacts of
meteors, asteroids, or comets; or perhaps associated with the collision of
detached land masses with continents proper (e.g., India with the rest of
Asia).
3.. Meteoritic and/or cometary impacts resulting in a kind of "nuclear
winter." This includes the possibility of regular comet showers caused by a
distant unseen solar companion (often called "Nemesis") deflecting outlying
cometary bodies into the inner solar system.
4.. Passage of the solar system through interstellar dust clouds as the
solar system moves up and down through the plane of the galaxy.
5.. "Fast" slippage of the earth's crustal plates on the underlying magma,
perhaps caused by imbalances in the distribution of ice on continental
surfaces. (This no longer appears to be a viable theory.)
6.. Variations in solar output. Perhaps the sun is a long-period irregular
variable star.
7.. Changes in ocean currents and temperatures caused by shifting
continental configurations.
I'm sure there are other explanations I can't bring to mind right now.
Regardless of the combination of mechanisms, there have been patterns of
alternating retreat and advance of glaciers, differences in global and local
temperature, and differences in moisture. The climate in the subarctic
regions changed several times over the course of the last set of ice ages.
This is very important: the climate was not always the same as it is now in
Siberia.
The mammoths managed to survive all these changes except the last one, when
humans finally penetrated into Siberia. There are a number of ice-age sites
in Eastern europe which contain stacks of mammoth bones, very likely
representing the results of human predation. Many other species of
mega-fauna disappeared at the same time as the mammoths. Whether or not
humans were largely responsible for these extinctions remains a disputed
question.
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