Claim CC361.2:
The bodies of mammoths that apparently froze suddenly have been found.
Their flesh was well preserved, and they still had food in their mouths.
This shows that they were quick-frozen in some sort of catastrophe.
Source:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here?
Brooklyn, NY, p. 203.
Response:
- The reports of frozen mammoths with well-preserved flesh are greatly
exaggerated. Parts of cadavers have been well preserved, but in all
cases, the internal organs were rotted, or the body was partly eaten by
scavengers, or both, before the animal became frozen. The Berezovka
mammoth, perhaps the most famous example, showed evidence of very slow
decay and was putrefied to the point that the excavators found its
stench unbearable (Weber 1980). The best preserved mammoth, Dima, was
an infant; its small size and starved condition permitted quicker
freezing, and even it had a little decomposition (Guthrie 1990, 7).
There are probably several different causes of the deaths of frozen
mammoths and other animals, including the following:
- Sinking in muddy silt (Guthrie 1990, 7-24).
- Drowning/burial in flash floods carrying a heavy load of silt.
- Predation, followed by winter freezing, followed by burial in silt
carried by snowmelt (Guthrie 1990, 81-113).
- Fall in a landslide, as a thawed riverbank gives way under the
animal's weight. The landslide and subsequent soil creep can bury
and preserve the animal (Kurtén 1986, chap. 9).
The food found with the mammoths were arctic species. Some mammoth
deaths would have been sudden, but there is no evidence of sudden
climate change.
- Frozen mammoths are not common. As of 1961, only thirty-nine have been
found with some flesh preserved, and only four of those were more or
less intact (Farrand 1961).
References:
- Farrand, William R., 1961. Frozen mammoths and modern geology.
Science 133: 729-735.
- Guthrie, R. D., 1990. (see below)
- Kurtén, B., 1986. (see below)
- Weber, C. G., 1980. (see below)
Further Reading:
Guthrie, R. Dale, 1990. Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Kurtén, Björn, 1986. How to Deep-Freeze a Mammoth. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Weber, Christopher Gregory, 1980. Common creationist attacks on
geology. Creation/Evolution 2: 10-25.
created 2003-4-29, modified 2004-6-15