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MO/MAMMOTHS
By: Admin Date: February 28, 2017, 12:38 pm
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Were woolly mammoths quick frozen early in the Flood?
I find numerous problems with Brown’s hypotheses for the woolly
mammoths in Siberia, Alaska, and the Yukon Territory. I only
have space to deal with the major issues. The first one is the
timing of the mammoth material: did they die very early in the
Flood or at the end of the post-Flood Ice Age?
Evidence the woolly mammoths died during the ice age
Undoubtedly many different elephant types existed before the
Flood, likely including various mammoths and mastodons, and so I
would expect to find elephant fossils buried by the Flood.
However, the bones and tusks of woolly mammoths under
consideration are found in the surficial sediments all across
the mid and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, not just
in the far north. In many of these areas, they are found in
post-Flood contexts, such as tar pits, river terraces, glacial
till, and local flood sediments. In the higher latitudes the
woolly mammoths, as well as other mammals, are found in the
permafrost, permanently frozen sediments. So, why should Brown
separate the two groups, the ones in the far north very early in
the Flood and those in the mid latitudes from the Ice Age?
Furthermore, they are also found in caves on St Paul Island of
Alaska47 and on top of glacial till in northwest Siberia48,
which are all clear post-Flood contexts at high latitudes.
If buried early in the Flood, they should be buried near the
bottom of the sedimentary layers. But, a huge number of woolly
mammoth remains lie in the surficial permafrost of the New
Siberian Islands on top of thick sedimentary rocks that include
carbonates, marine fossils, and coal.49 In Brown’s prediction No
20, he states: “One should not find marine fossils, layered
strata, oil, coal seams, or limestone directly beneath
undisturbed rock ice or frozen mammoth carcasses.”50 Although
this seems like a good prediction, Brown really means that
woolly mammoth carcasses will not be directly above marine
fossils, layered strata, oil, coal seams, or limestone. The
prediction likely fails in the New Siberian Islands, but it
would be difficult to prove since one would have to drill below
the few carcasses found (the vast majority of woolly mammoths
are bones and tusks) on the islands. Given the widespread, thick
sedimentary rocks below the surface of the New Siberian Islands,
the few carcasses would have to be on top of igneous or
metamorphic rocks to fulfill the prediction.
Figure 11. Woolly mammoth distribution (redrawn by Daniel Lewis
with Eurasia from Khalke, 1999, figure 13).
Figure 11. Woolly mammoth distribution (redrawn by Daniel Lewis
with Eurasia from Khalke, 1999,62 figure 13).
Further evidence that the mammoths were associated with the
post-Flood Ice Age is that they are rarely found in the central
and northern portions of areas covered by the continental ice
sheets during the Ice Age (the exceptions can be explained
within the post-Flood Ice Age model). Figure 11 shows the
distribution of woolly mammoths in the Northern Hemisphere. This
suggests that the ice prevented woolly mammoths from colonizing
those areas because of the existence of ice sheets. Otherwise,
if the woolly mammoths were buried early in the Flood, there
should also be an abundance of woolly mammoth remains in
post-Flood glaciated areas as well.
Further problems with the quick freeze idea
Although the quick freeze idea in which mild temperatures
suddenly fall to below –90°C (–150°F) is a reasonable idea that
was suggested almost 200 years ago by George Cuvier, it has a
few problems. Brown postulates that the woolly mammoths lived
before the Flood in a temperate climate at mid latitudes and
were quick-frozen in extremely cold muddy hail very early in the
Flood. Then later in the Flood, when the mountains uplifted in
his great plate crunch, the earth rolled 35 to 45°, sending the
frozen woolly mammoths northward to high latitudes where we find
them today. Besides grave doubts on the possibility of such an
Earth roll, the details of which have not been worked out, one
would expect to see a huge number of woolly mammoth and other
animal carcasses in the far north. However, the number of
carcasses, defined by any scrap of flesh, is less than 100.
Brown even has an excellent map of their locations, and as of
1999, there are only 58 of them.51 The tens of thousands of
woolly mammoths discovered so far are practically all bones and
tusks, indicating a time for decay of the flesh.
A second piece of evidence against the quick freeze is that the
carcasses have been partially decayed.52
Third, fly pupae are associated with the bones and carcasses,
showing that flies were able to lay eggs and maggots to be
hatched, which would take some time.51
Fourth, signs of scavenging occur on some carcasses, such as
Blue Babe which Dale Guthrie of the University of Alaska at
Fairbanks has analyzed.53
Fifth, when the vegetation of their stomachs is analyzed, it
indicates different seasons of death.54,55 In a quick freeze,
death is instant and the stomach contents should record one
season of death.
And lastly, since half-digested stomach contents is said to be
evidence for a quick freeze, partially decayed vegetation is
found in the stomach and intestines of mastodons found in
unfrozen peat, the remains of old bogs, in the northeast and
north-central United States.56 Thus, the state of preservation
of the vegetation could be caused by the low amount of bacteria
in a cold environment and the fact that elephants digest their
food after the stomach, which serves as a large storage pouch in
which the vegetation is partially broken down by acids and
enzymes.57,58 Table 2 summarizes the evidence against a quick
freeze of the woolly mammoths early in the Flood.
Part of a Northern Hemisphere Ice Age steppe (grassland)
community
Found in surficial sediments, not at the bottom of thick
sedimentary rocks
Found in a cave on St Paul Island in the Bering Sea (cave wall
is of Flood origin)
Found on top of glacial till northwest Siberia
Rarely found within central and northern areas that were
glaciated during the Ice Age
Carcasses rare, while they should be abundant if quick frozen
and buried by muddy hail (bones and tusks abundant)
Carcasses partially decayed with fly pupae in both carcasses and
the bones
Some carcasses scavenged
Stomach vegetation indicates different seasons of death
Half-decayed vegetation also found in US mastodons of the Ice
Age
Table 2. Summary of the evidences against Brown’s hypothesis
that the woolly mammoths in the high latitudes of the Northern
Hemisphere died early in the Flood by a quick freeze.
An ice age model for the life and death of the woolly mammoth
After adding up as many facts as available, I have determined
the evidence shows the woolly mammoths lived and died during the
Ice Age.59 To make a long story short, the woolly mammoth
population increased rapidly to millions in the first few
hundred years after the Flood. Early in the Ice Age, Siberia had
very mild winters and cool summers with heavy precipitation
caused by warm onshore flow of mild, moist air from the Arctic
and North Pacific Oceans. Forests must have grown in the
unglaciated lowlands of Siberia early in the Ice Age. By the
middle of the Ice Age, the area had dried enough for a grassland
to be widespread, as part of the great Northern Hemisphere
Mammoth Steppe.60 Millions of woolly mammoths and many other
mammals spread into Siberia, Alaska, and the Yukon. But at the
end of the Ice Age, winters became much colder than today as
summers warmed. The ice sheets and mountain ice caps melted, the
Arctic Ocean froze over with sea ice developing far south in the
North Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Dry, cold, windy storms were
typical, causing monstrous dust storms. The woolly mammoths were
buried in loess (wind-blown silt), commonly found up to 60 m
(200 ft) thick in the lowlands of Siberia and Alaska. The
slumping of this loess in hilly or mountain terrain mixed trees,
vegetation, and animals remains, which has been called muck by
gold miners and is not a mysterious substance. When the
permafrost formed, abundant ice lenses and wedges formed, which
is also not mysterious. The wind-blown silt is able to explain
many of the mysteries associated with the woolly mammoths, such
as the well-preserved nature of bones, tusks, and carcasses, how
they were entombed in permafrost, why some are in a general
standing position, why some suffocated, and why some animals
have broken bones.
Artificial comparison table
Since Brown compared my hypothesis with his, along with the poor
uniformitarian and non-creationist catastrophist ideas in his
Table 12,61 it gives me a chance to evaluate his comparison
table, which should be indicative of other comparison tables
that always portray Brown’s model as vastly superior, although
he does admit the subjective nature of these tables. I will only
compare a few of the categories. Taking number one, the
abundance of food, Brown scores himself high and me low. But
Brown explains the abundant food as originating at mid latitudes
where the woolly mammoths were living at the time in a warm
climate. Then the earth rolled 35 to 45° north to place the
frozen carcasses at high latitude. This is massive conjecture,
or one could say special pleading, especially when there is no
physical evidence to support such a claim. So, without
demonstrating the feasibility of such a poleward shift, which
seems impossible by his mountain uplift mechanism, he scores
high because of the greater abundance of food in the mid
latitudes. I would conclude that this high score is artificial
and actually depends upon him first demonstrating the
feasibility of such a roll. I would explain the abundance of
food from the mid Ice Age drying of Siberia caused by cooler sea
surface temperatures, less evaporation, and downslope foehn
winds off the ice sheet to the west. So, the area would be a
grassland, part of Guthrie’s Northern Hemisphere Mammoth
Steppe,52 a grassland like Midwest North America today.
In the second category, a warm climate, he gets the same high
rating and I get the same low rating. His warm climate is
because the animals were living at lower latitudes. So, it is
the same issue as the first category—he needs to prove his roll
idea first. In my model, the winter temperatures were not warm
but mild compared to Siberian winters today and were caused by a
lack of sea ice, warm ocean water, and copious latent heat given
off during atmospheric condensation.
In the fourth category, yedomas and loess, he gives himself the
highest score and me the lowest. He explains loess as from the
mud in the hail, while I would explain it as true wind-blown
silt late in the Ice Age (see above). The yedomas are
essentially hills in the permafrost, caused by the partial
thawing of the permafrost around the hills during the warming
right after the Ice Age. The mammoths are mostly left frozen in
the loess hills, while many of the bones and carcasses likely
decayed in the thawing part of the permafrost. Yedomas are no
mystery.
Besides being artificial, his comparison table sometimes has
categories of questionable significance, such as the fifth one,
elevated burial. This is because the animals are found in
yedomas or loess hills, which is not all that significant for
any hypothesis since it is a feature of partially thawed out
permafrost.
He has set up a straw man and hacked it down.
He scores high in some categories because the categories are
deductions of his model, such as the ad hoc idea of the great
Earth-roll in categories one and two. He compares his model to
models that are of poor quality, such as the Lake Drowning
Hypothesis for the extinction of the woolly mammoths. And based
on my scores, I can conclude that he does not understand my
model well enough to evaluate it, although in some cases he has
some valid criticisms. He has set up a straw man and hacked it
down.
Summary evaluation
As a result of my analysis of Brown’s HPT model for the Flood, I
do not consider his model a viable Flood model for the general
and specific reasons summarized above. It seems to rely on the
deductive method of science in which an idea is first considered
and then a whole host of data is fitted into the model. Great
errors can occur with this approach as geologist Chamberlin
warned. A better method is the inductive method of science in
which one lets the observations speak for themselves and sees if
the model can survive critical analysis. Contrary data should
lead to the rejection or modification of the model. We can
safely say the big picture points to the Flood as the origin of
sedimentary rocks, fossils, and surface features, but as for a
Flood mechanism and an explanation of diverse phenomena, Brown’s
model falls far short.
Related Articles
Genesis and catastrophe
Flood models: the need for an integrated approach
The extinction of the woolly mammoth: was it a quick freeze?
Flood models and biblical realism
A receding Flood scenario for the origin of the Grand Canyon
The paradox of Pacific guyots and a possible solution for
the thick ‘reefal’ limestone on Enewetok Island
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