Frozen Mammoths

Tolmachoff, I. P.  “The Carcasses of the Mammoth and Rhinoceros Found in the Frozen Ground of Siberia.”  Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series 23(1):11–74.  1929.  A 1929 survey of the mammoth and rhinoceros carcasses found frozen in Siberia.  It opens with the ivory trade, because ivory hunters had discovered the localities of the frozen carcasses.  The article uses it for the refutation of the fresh-meat legend, the count of 39 carcasses, and the account of how the animals died.

1. 1a.

   Page 60:  “Between the moment of the death of a mammoth and that of its transformation into a frozen carcass and burial within the natural refrigerator must have passed some time during which the carcass surely suffered some decay, although current opinion attributes to the meat of a mammoth an almost absolute freshness.  Howorth, for example, compares it with 'the flesh recently taken out of an Esquimaux cache or a Yakut subterranean meat-save.'  As matter of fact such freshness is a legend.” ↩ ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 60:  “All stories published in newspapers of this country of a dinner in St. Petersburg where the meat of the Beresovca mammoth was served. are a hundred per cent invention.”  Tolmachoff's footnote for the claim he is refuting cites a hollow-earth book, M. B. Gardner's A Journey to the Earth's Interior, p. 44. ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 60:  “An examination of the flesh and fat of the mammoth from Beresovca River has also shown that they suffered a deeply penetrating chemical alteration as a result of the very slow decay which was going on, probably, in an airtight medium.”  His footnote 3 cites Bialinitzki-Birula, "Observations histologiques," p. 19. ↩ ↩

4. 1d.

   Page 60:  His note 3 cites Bialinitzki-Birula, F. A., "Observations histologiques," p. 19.  The papers he cites are early-twentieth-century Russian Academy reports on the Berezovka expedition.  This article therefore reports only what Tolmachoff says they found, and claims nothing about their method.  Page 35:  His note 3 cites both Bialinitzki-Birula, "Observations histologiques," p. 10, and Zaleskii, W. W., "Etude microscopique," p. 33. ↩ ↩

5. 1e.

   Page 41:  “IN THE preceding description the writer has brought together thirty-nine discoveries known to him of carcasses of mammoth and rhinoceros found in the frozen ground of Siberia during a period of time covering more than 225 years.”  “All recorded cases are of very different values, so far as the preservation of carcasses is concerned.  A few of them refer to more or less complete carcasses, most of them only to parts.”  Page 45:  “Of the thirty-nine recorded discoveries thirty-four refer to the mammoth and five to the rhinoceros.”  He excludes three reports, among them this one:  “Benkendorff's mammoth, 1846, the report on which was undoubtedly a fiction.”  That is the upright mammoth holding grass in its trunk, the single most-quoted flash-freeze anecdote, called fiction in 1929 by the man who supplied the carcass count the anecdote travels with. ↩

6. 1f.

   Page 41:  “In a country where the ivory of, at least, 250 animals is collected yearly, the greatest part of it out of frozen ground, the number would be increased hundreds or thousands of times, if it were possible to register all the cases in which soft parts were found along with bones.” ↩

7. 1g.

   Page 35:  “Perhaps the animal had broken through into a crevice, as thought Herz, or plunged into soft ground, as suggested by the writer, while on its pasture-ground, and died of injuries received (the pelvis, a forefoot and a few ribs were found broken, as well as the indication of a strong hemorrhage) and also of suffocation in mud.  The death by suffocation is proved by the erected male genital, a condition inexplicable in any other way.”  Tolmachoff attributes the observation to Vollosovich.  Pfizenmayer, who handled the parts, records only their good preservation, not an erection, so this detail rests on the Russian reports rather than on the German account. ↩

8. 1h.

   Page 57:  “Mud originated in this way is very soft and at the same time extremely sticky.  A few inches of it are practically impassable for a man, a foot or a little more was, probably, sufficient to stop a mammoth. …  Once trapped in a moving mud stream the body of a mammoth made a kind of a dam against which the mud piled up until it could overflow the body and finally suffocate the animal. …  If the accident happened in the fall, the covering of the carcass and its freezing could go on hand in hand, and in a short time the carcass would be completely frozen.”  Page 63:  His two accepted mechanisms are burial in thaw mudflows, or drowning in rivers and lakes followed by freezing and burial in drift. ↩ ↩

Herz, O. F.  “Frozen Mammoth in Siberia.”  Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution … for the Year Ending June 30, 1903, 611–625.  Washington: GPO.  1904.  Herz's own diary of the 1901 expedition to the Berezovka mammoth, extracts translated from his report to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.  He led the expedition, which left St. Petersburg on 3 May 1901, and it is the earliest eyewitness account of the carcass.  The article relies on it as the first-hand record of Herz taking the food out of the mouth himself.

1. 2a.

   Page 619:  “we could take out the remnants of food from between the molars on the left side.  These remnants appear masticated and apparently do not contain parts of pine needles or larch, but only fragments of various grasses.  The imprint of the tooth crenations is well preserved upon the food bits.  There is also a small quantity of food upon the well-preserved tongue.” ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 621:  “The flesh from under the shoulder, which is fibrous and marbled with fat, is dark red in color and looks as fresh as well-frozen beef or horse meat.  It looked so appetizing that we wondered for some time whether we should not taste it, but no one would venture to take it into his mouth, and horseflesh was given the preference.  The dogs cleaned up whatever mammoth meat was thrown to them.” ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 2c.

   Page 614:  “Upon the left hind leg I also found portions of decayed flesh, in which the muscular bundles were easily discernible.  The stench emitted by this extremity was unbearable, so that it was necessary to stop work every minute.  A thorough washing failed to remove the horrible smell from our hands.” ↩

4. 2d.

   Page 621:  “The walls of the stomach first exposed were dark coffee-brown, almost black in color, and were badly decayed and torn, even where they were not injured mechanically.”  “The stomach with its contents is becoming more and more exposed, while the other organs are destroyed.”  Page 620:  “the remains of food in the stomach were exposed.  The latter was badly decayed.” ↩

5. 2e.

   Page 617:  “The upper layer of earth was at that time probably not yet everywhere firm enough to support the weight of mammoths, and probably our specimen broke through into a crevice, which would account for his position and for the fracture of such heavy bones as the pelvis and the right forearm.  After falling, the mammoth no doubt tried to crawl out, the position of both fore legs being peculiarly like that of an animal making such effort, but the injuries were so serious that his strength gave way and he soon perished.”  Page 622:  Records a further break:  “removed the shoulder bone, which was broken in the middle, evidently injured when the mammoth fell.” ↩ ↩

6. 2f.

   Page 615:  “The presence of a thick wool shows that the animal was well adapted to endure cold, and it is improbable that he died from hunger, for a large quantity of fragments of food was in his stomach.” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Were Siberian Mammoths Quick Frozen?”  Frozen in Time: Woolly Mammoths, the Ice Age, and the Biblical Key to Their Secrets.  Master Books.  2004.  Chapter 15 of Oard's book Frozen in Time, which argues against a sudden freeze of the Siberian carcasses.  It cites the carcass census, the decay and fly pupae, the scavenging, the death seasons and the way elephants digest food, and it concludes that a quick freeze is an unnecessary hypothesis.  The article quotes that verdict as the creationist answer to the quick-freeze story.

1. 3a.

   Chapter 15:  “A quick freeze is an unnecessary hypothesis.” ↩ ↩

2. 3b.

   Chapter 15:  “The quick-freeze hypothesis is an old idea, developed by scientists in the late 19th century.  Birds Eye Frozen Foods Company ran an experiment based on heat conduction and the state of preservation of the stomach contents.  They concluded that the atmospheric temperature had to quickly fall below -150°F (-100°C).” ↩

3. 3c.

   Chapter 15:  “In 1929, there were only 39 known carcasses of woolly mammoths and rhinoceroses.  Of these, only about a half dozen were fairly complete;  most of the 39 animals consisted of only a few small remnants of soft tissue attached to the bones.  Since 1929, a few dozen new carcasses have been discovered, including the baby mammoth, Dima, found in 1977.  Walter Brown lists 58 carcasses as of 2001.” ↩

4. 3d.

   Chapter 15:  “The Jarkov mammoth was excavated in north central Siberia in 1999 and was widely publicized as a carcass encased in a block of permafrost in two Discovery Channel documentaries in 2000 and 2001. …  Unfortunately, upon thawing out the block, they found only a skeleton with a small strip of flesh.”  The same chapter reports:  “More than 1,000 blowfly pupae cases were found within the nasal cavity of one of the mammoth partial carcasses found at Colorado Creek, Alaska, in 1983.  It is unlikely these fly pupae were laid after modern exposure.  Fly pupae should not be associated with bones and carcasses if death and burial were by a quick freeze.” ↩

5. 3e.

   Chapter 15:  “Based on 50 freshly killed elephants, it was discovered that the main digestive process of elephants occurs after the food passes through the stomach, primarily in the cecum and colon. …  The researchers found no protozoa and no fermentation in the stomachs of the culled elephants. …  Therefore, they found the stomach is mainly a storage area before digestion.” ↩ ↩

6. 3f.

   Chapter 15:  “the animals preserved as carcasses appear to have died at different times of the year.  A quick freeze would be instant and in the same season.”  His Table 15.1 gives Berezovka late summer or early fall, the Selerikan horse late July to early August or late fall, the Mylakhchin bison early summer, the Yuribei mammoth early spring or late autumn, and Blue Babe autumn or early winter. ↩

Morris, John D.  “Did the Frozen Mammoths Die in the Flood or in the Ice Age?”  Acts & Facts 22(11).  Institute for Creation Research.  Nov 1, 1993.  A short 1993 magazine article by John D. Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research.  It argues that no more than several dozen mammoths have been found frozen, that the meat was rancid rather than quick frozen, and that the remains lie in the frozen banks of modern rivers, not in the rock layers below.  The article uses it as the 1993 case by the Institute against the quick-freeze story.

1. 4a.

   “We've all heard the stories of how 'millions of frozen mammoths are found preserved in Siberia, frozen so quickly their flesh could still be eaten today, complete with sub-tropical vegetation in their mouths.'  Temperatures two hundred degrees below zero are needed to quick-freeze an animal of such large bulk, it is claimed. …  To answer these questions, we must first establish the facts, checking the original sources.  And when we do, we find that no more than several dozen mammoths have been found frozen or partially frozen.” ↩ ↩

2. 4b.

   “The frozen meat itself, while wolves and sled dogs have been known to sample it on occasion, is usually somewhat rancid, not quick frozen and ready to be sold.” ↩

3. 4c.

   “the stomach contents and unswallowed food (actually caught between the teeth) are that of a mountain meadow, not unlike that of alpine regions today.” ↩

4. 4d.

   “These bones are found in the frozen tundra … and are not found in the thick sequences (ten thousand feet thick in places) of sedimentary rock lying stratigraphically below the frozen soil.  The frozen parts are, with few exceptions, found in the frozen banks of modern rivers, usually in small lenses within the larger tundra layer.  Some specimens seem to have drowned after breaking through ice covering a river.” ↩

Sarfati, Jonathan.  “Mammoth—riddle of the Ice Age.”  Creation 22(2):10–15.  Mar 2000.  A magazine article by Jonathan Sarfati for Creation Ministries International.  It argues that the frozen mammoths were not snap-frozen, because most show scavenging and decay, and that years in the ice dried the flesh into a mummy.  The article uses it as the 2000 statement by Creation Ministries International against the snap-freeze idea.

1. 5a.

   “Some have claimed that the well-preserved frozen mammoths must have been snap-frozen to about –97 °C (–146 °F).  However, this is not so.  Most frozen mammoths show signs of scavenging and decay.  Many years in the ice caused the flesh to dry out (just like a stew left in a freezer for years), resulting in a mummy.”  The stew analogy is Guthrie's, from p. 23 of Frozen Fauna, and is not credited here. ↩ ↩

2. 5b.

   “Some frozen mammoths had partially digested stomach contents.  But this doesn't prove a supercold snap freeze—a mastodon with stomach contents was found in mid-western USA, where the ground was not even frozen.” ↩ ↩

3. 5c.

   “most mammoths have left no trace:  there are fewer than 50 known woolly mammoth carcasses, only about a half-dozen of which were complete.  But an estimated 50,000 tusks have been found.” ↩

Brown, Walt.  In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood.  9th draft edition.  2019.  A creation-science book by Walt Brown, a creationist engineer, that presents his hydroplate theory of the Flood.  The article cites its chapter on frozen mammoths as the most recent defense of a sudden freeze, placed inside the Flood.  A printed ninth edition dated 2026 also exists, but the article cites this 2019 draft explicitly.

1. 6a.

   Chapter Frozen Mammoths, pp. 269–301, page 269:  “Muddy water from the fountains of the great deep jetted above the atmosphere where it froze into extremely cold hail.  Within hours, mammoths, which could not have lived in today's Arctic climates or at Arctic latitudes, were buried alive and quickly frozen as some of this muddy hail fell back to Earth in a gigantic hail storm.” ↩

2. 6b.

   Page 276:  Brown's endnote 78 cites Sanderson, 1960, pp. 82, 83, and prints:  “Independently, Sanderson concluded, 'The flesh of many of the animals found in the muck must have been very rapidly and deeply frozen, for its cells had not burst. …  Frozen-food experts have pointed out that to do this, starting with a healthy, live specimen, you would have to suddenly drop the temperature of the surrounding air to well below minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit.'”  The primary has Sanderson write.  “its cells were not burst”.  ; and.  “you would have to drop the temperature of the air surrounding it down to a point well below minus-150 degrees Fahrenheit.”  Brown's page reference is right; his wording is not verbatim.  The article's own text quotes Sanderson, not Brown's version of Sanderson. ↩

3. 6c.

   Table 4, page 271:  “Reported Mammoth and Rhinoceros Discoveries”.  The table has 57 rows, from Ides in 1693 to 1999, each with date, finder, condition and source.  Figure 121, page 270:  Figure 121 maps them by row number.  Page 269:  Page 269 adds:  “Since 1800, at least 11 scientific expeditions have excavated fleshy remains of extinct mammoths.” ↩ ↩

4. 6d.

   Page 276:  “At normal body temperatures, stomach acids and enzymes break down vegetable material within an hour.  What inhibited this process?  The only plausible explanation is for the stomach to cool to about 40°F in ten hours or less.  But because the stomach is protected inside a warm body (96.6°F for elephants), how cold must the outside air become to drop the stomach's temperature to 40°F?  Experiments have shown that the outer layers of skin would have had to drop suddenly to at least -175°F!”  Endnote 76 is Dillow pp. 380–381 and endnote 77 is Dillow pp. 383–396, so the figure is Dillow's calculation rather than an experiment Brown ran.  The calculation has not been checked by anyone in this debate. ↩ ↩ ↩

5. 6e.

   Table 7, page 287:  “Mammoth Myths vs. Mammoth Facts”.  Myth 1:  “Fresh buttercups were in the mouth and stomach of the Berezovka mammoth.”  The fact:  “Its stomach contained three seeds from plants that produce delicate, yellow buttercups.  Fragments of other flowers were in its stomach.  No large flowers were in its mouth.” ↩ ↩

6. 6f.

   Table 7, page 287:  Myth 2, on mammoth steaks:  “These reports persist but are never specific enough to verify.” ↩

7. 6g.

   Table 7, page 287:  Myth 3:  “Mammoths are encased in ice.  Their preservation is complete.”  The fact:  “Charles Lyell popularized this myth… There are very few reports of complete encasement in ice.  …  Most frozen mammoths are found partially preserved in frozen muck or sediments.” ↩

8. 6h.

   Page 269:  “Nikolai Vereshchagin, Chairman of the Russian Academy of Science's Committee for the Study of Mammoths, estimated that more than half a million tons of mammoth tusks were buried along a 600-mile stretch of the Arctic coast.  Because the typical tusk weighs 100 pounds, this implies that about 5 million mammoths lived in this small region.” ↩

Pfizenmayer, E. W.  Siberian Man and Mammoth.  London: Blackie & Son.  Translated by Muriel D. Simpson.  1939.  A book by Pfizenmayer, who worked beside Herz at the Berezovka mammoth, describing the carcass as it was dug out.  This is the English translation of the German original, Mammutleichen und Urwaldmenschen in Nordost-Sibirien, which appeared in Leipzig in 1926.  The article uses it as the second excavator's account of the mouth, the death and the organs.

1. 7a.

   Page 90:  “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 latter carrying seeds.  We could tell from these that the mammoth must have come to its miserable end in the autumn.” ↩ ↩

2. 7b.

   Page 90:  “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.” ↩ ↩

3. 7c.

   Page 103:  “We could now see the walls of the stomach.  They were in some places dark grey, in others dark brown, and everywhere badly decayed and torn by animals, so that the stomach contents oozed out at every rent.  Nothing was left of the vital organs—heart, lungs and liver;  animals had apparently destroyed them completely.”  Page 101:  Records the diet and the volume:  “consisted, as I have said before, of various kinds of grass and of a higher type of flowering plant, on which seeds still remained in places.  On the other hand, I found no vestiges of conifers.” ↩

Fisher, D. C. et al.  “Anatomy, death, and preservation of a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) calf, Yamal Peninsula, northwest Siberia.”  Quaternary International 255:94–105.  2012.  A detailed study of a well-preserved mammoth calf from northwest Siberia, called Lyuba, whose airway the authors found packed with vivianite, an iron phosphate mineral that forms in some lake muds.  They date the calf to about 41,800 radiocarbon years and read the vivianite as asphyxia from inhaling mud, not drowning.  The article uses it as its best test case for how a mammoth body was preserved, since the calf was well fed and the authors propose that bacterial acid, not freezing, helped keep her body intact until permafrost took over.

1. 8a.

   Section Abstract:  “This animal's trachea and bronchi are completely occluded with fine-grained vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate) such as occurs in some lacustrine settings.  Because this vivianite does not penetrate the lung beyond the bronchi, we infer that it must have entered as a viscous mass that occluded the airway, causing asphyxia.” ↩ ↩

2. 8b.

   Page 95:  “As noted by Kosintsev et al. (2010) in the first scientific publication announcing the specimen, Lyuba is essentially complete and in better overall condition than any previously recovered mammoth remains.” ↩ ↩

3. 8c.

   Pages 104–105, section Conclusions:  “Her cause of death, asphyxia following reflexive inhalation of cold, wet mud, appears to have resulted from an unfortunate accident – not from any debilitating prior condition.” ↩ ↩

4. 8d.

   Page 102, section 7.1:  “On dental evidence (Rountrey et al., in press), we interpret Lyuba to have died in early spring.”  The same passage explains why the late-summer indicators in her gut do not date her death: they come from her mother's old faecal boli, which Lyuba ate. ↩

5. 8e.

   Pages 102–103, section 7.2, Cause of death:  “Kosintsev et al. (2010) regard Lyuba's cause of death as drowning, and their argument for this position is summarized in their last sentence (p. 211), 'The bottom sediments in its intestine indicate that it drowned in a water body'.  However, as argued above, the absence of sediment in the milk-filled stomach means that even in a protracted death struggle, sediment in the intestine cannot have been acquired by mouth – nor do we regard it as plausible that it was acquired via the anus.”  Page 103, section 7.2, Cause of death:  “As an alternative to drowning, we propose that Lyuba died of asphyxia or suffocation after forceful, reflexive inhalation of a viscous 'mud' composed of the fine-grained vivianite that now occupies her trachea and bronchi. …  The only reports we have seen of similar material involve lacustrine settings where vivianite mud accumulates in anaerobic conditions (e.g., Manning et al., 1991).  This interpretation implies that Lyuba's death involved her falling into such a lacustrine setting and somehow inhaling vivianite sediment.  We acknowledge that locating these events in or near a lake raises the question of whether our interpretation is really different from drowning after all.” ↩ ↩

6. 8f.

   Page 99:  “her mouth was full of mud, fine sand, and small iron-rich concretions that remain ambiguous in origin.” ↩

7. 8g.

   Section Abstract:  “Abundant subcutaneous fat and milk residues in the alimentary tract demonstrate that this animal was in good nutritional condition before death.” ↩

8. 8h.

   Section Abstract:  “We propose that this was consequent on postmortem colonization of the body by lactic acid-producing bacteria.  These bacteria and their metabolites may have promoted preservation during the time before the body was incorporated in permafrost and could also have inhibited scavenging and bacterial decomposition following recent exposure of the specimen.” ↩

9. 8i.

   Page 97, table 1:  “AMS age estimates for Lyuba, Center for Isotope Research, Groningen University, Groningen, Netherlands”.  GrA-35690, 36,690 (+320, −280), skin; GrA-35859, 37,150 (+280, −250), skin; GrA-41246, 41,910 (+550, −450), bone collagen (rib); GrA-41861, 41,700 (+700, −550), plant remains from intestines.  The two skin dates are younger, and the authors set them aside.  “These were much better candidates for dating, and age estimates based on them are both older and congruent with one another. …  Based on these dates, Lyuba lived about 41,800 ¹⁴C yr BP.” ↩ ↩ ↩

10. 8j.

    Section Abstract:  “AMS dating of bone collagen and plant tissues from the intestine provide age estimates that average about 41,800 ¹⁴C yr BP.” ↩

van Geel, B. et al.  “The ecological implications of a Yakutian mammoth's last meal.”  Quaternary Research 69(3):361–376.  2008.  A research paper on the gut contents of a woolly mammoth called the Yukagir mammoth, found in 2002 in northern Yakutia and dated to about 18,500 radiocarbon years before present.  Pollen, plant remains, DNA and chemical markers showed that it ate grass and sedge in a treeless grassland, had eaten dung, and died in early spring.  The article uses it for the death season, for the dung the mammoth ate, and for a burial in slumping mud whose cause of death the authors could not determine.

1. 9a.

   Page 373:  “Death at the start of the growing season makes the Yukagir mammoth different from the Beresowka, Kirgilakh, Yuribey, Shandrin and Fishhook Mammoths, which all perished in late summer or autumn.” ↩ ↩

2. 9b.

   Page 373:  “Lying down in a sheltered hollow, he died, and became covered with a thick mud layer that slumped into the hollow during the warm season, which subsequently froze and preserved part of him.” ↩ ↩

3. 9c.

   Page 373:  “The exact cause of death of the mammoth cannot be determined directly from his remains.” ↩ ↩

4. 9d.

   Table 1, page 362:  “Radiocarbon dates of the Yukagir Mammoth (after Mol et al., 2005)”.  GrN-28258, 18,510 ± 80, bone (rib); AA-59602, 18,160 ± 110, same; GrN-28259, 18,510 ± 100, skin; GrA-24288, 18,680 ± 100, hair; GIN-12719, 18,200 ± 60, bone.  Table 5 gives no dated material for any of the other five carcasses, and the paper never states that any of those dates is on gut contents. ↩

5. 9e.

   Section Abstract:  “Fruit-bodies of dung-inhabiting Ascomycete fungi which develop after at least one week of exposure to air were found inside the intestine.  Therefore the mammoth had eaten dung.  It was probably mammoth dung as no bile acids were detected among the fecal biomarkers analysed.” ↩

6. 9f.

   Table 5, page 373:  “Woolly mammoths found in Siberia with remains of dung in the gastrointestinal tract”.  Yuribey 9,600 ± 300 (VSEGINGEO, Vasil'chuk et al. 1997); Yukagir ca. 18,500 (this study); Fishhook 20,620 ± 70 (Beta-148647, Mol et al. 2006b); Beresowka 31,750 ± 2,500 (T-299, Vasil'chuk et al. 1997); Kirgilakh (Dima) 39,570 ± 870 (LU-718A, Sulerzhitsky 1997); Shandrin 40,350 ± 880 (LU-595, Vasil'chuk et al. 1997).  The dates are on plant material from inside the animals. ↩ ↩

Sanderson, Ivan T.  “Riddle of the Frozen Giants.”  Saturday Evening Post 232(29):39, 82–83.  Jan 16, 1960.  A popular magazine article in which Ivan T. Sanderson asked how so many animals were killed and frozen, and argued that the earth's crust had shifted.  The article uses it as the piece that carried the story to a mass audience, and as the source of the claims it refutes: that the animals were standing, that their flesh was fresh, and that the mouths held buttercups.

1. 10a.

   Pages 39, 82–83. ↩

2. 10b.

   Page 82:  “The greatest riddle, however, is when, why and how did all these assorted creatures, and in such absolutely countless numbers, get killed, mashed up and frozen into this horrific indecency?” ↩

3. 10c.

   Page 82:  “But last, and worst of all, many of these animals were perfectly fresh, whole and undamaged, and still either standing or at least kneeling upright.”  Farrand 1961, p. 731, quotes the first part of this sentence against Sanderson.  No excavation report cited in the Frozen Mammoths article describes a standing carcass; Berezovka was found sitting, with a broken pelvis. ↩

4. 10d.

   Page 82:  “The flesh of many of the animals found in the muck must have been very rapidly and deeply frozen, for its cells were not burst and, although one mammoth has been found by the radiocarbon dating method to be just over 10,000 years old, the flesh of these animals was remarkably fresh and some was devoured by the explorers' sledge dogs.” ↩ ↩

5. 10e.

   Page 82:  “This meal proved to have been composed of delicate sedges and grasses and—most amazing of all—fresh buttercup flowers.  The stomach contained many more quarts of similar material.”  Four paragraphs later on the same page:  “Finally, there were these buttercups on its tongue.”  Page 83:  He repeats it:  “we find mammoths with buttercups in their teeth.”  No source is given for any of the three.  The claim is contradicted by both excavators, and by Walt Brown's own Table 7. ↩

6. 10f.

   Page 83:  “And this is where we get back to quick-freezing mammoths, for the frozen-food experts have pointed out that to do this, starting with a healthy, live specimen, you would have to drop the temperature of the air surrounding it down to a point well below minus-150 degrees Fahrenheit.”  No company, experiment or reference is named anywhere in Sanderson's article. ↩ ↩

7. 10g.

   Page 83:  “Ergo, the crust of the earth must have shifted.  Whether it did so in bits and the bits then shifted around reciprocally as suggested by Wegener, or whether it moved as a whole as recently propounded by Hapgood (The Saturday Evening Post, January 10, 1959), cannot be debated here.”  “Such descending gases might well be cold enough to kill and then instantly freeze a mammoth.” ↩

MacDonald, G. M. et al.  “Pattern of extinction of the woolly mammoth in Beringia.”  Nature Communications 3:893.  Jun 12, 2012.  A study that mapped 1,323 radiocarbon dates for woolly mammoths across Siberia, Alaska and the Yukon, and set them against peat, wood, archaeological and pollen records of the same period.  It finds that mammoths were common in Marine Isotope Stage 3, about 45–30 ka (thousands of years ago), that northern mammoths fell back during the Last Glacial Maximum and again at the Younger Dryas, and that they vanished in the early Holocene as peatlands, wet tundra and forest spread.  The article uses it to show that the mammoth dates have a structure that tracks independently dated climate intervals.

1. 11a.

   The authors describe it as.  “a new geo-referenced radiocarbon database of 1,323 woolly mammoth dates, 658 peatland initiation dates, 447 tree and wood macrofossil dates, 576 dates from Paleolithic archaeological sites (~45 ka–10 ka), palynological records and genetic data”.  Of the 1,323 mammoth dates, the authors write:  “377 are infinite in age or classified as potentially > 45 ka.”  On quality control, they write:  “we have only incorporated dates from laboratories that we believe participated in either international or internal Soviet/Russian multi-lab intercomparisons.”  Kuzmin and Orlova, co-authors here, have review compilations of their own, which this paper supersedes with a larger database. ↩ ↩

2. 11b.

   The abstract says:  “mammoths were abundant in the open-habitat of Marine Isotope Stage 3 (~45–30 ka).  During the Last Glacial Maximum (~25–20 ka), northern populations declined while those in interior Siberia increased.  Northern mammoths increased after the glacial maximum, but declined at and after the Younger Dryas (~12.9–11.5 ka).  Remaining continental mammoths, now concentrated in the north, disappeared in the early Holocene with development of extensive peatlands, wet tundra, birch shrubland and coniferous forest.” ↩

Schirrmeister, L. et al.  “Sedimentary characteristics and origin of the Late Pleistocene Ice Complex on north-east Siberian Arctic coastal lowlands and islands — A review.”  Quaternary International 241(1–2):3–25.  2011.  A review of the Ice Complex, the ice-rich, silty permafrost deposits of northeast Siberia, drawn from fourteen field sites on the Laptev and East Siberian coasts and islands and sampled at 0.5 to 1 metre intervals.  It finds the deposits chronologically and stratigraphically, but not genetically, equivalent to loess, and proposes a model it calls nival lithogenesis, meaning origin through snow processes, that combines earlier hypotheses.  The article relies on it to reject Tomirdiaro's loess-on-sea-ice claim, the authority that Oard and Brown both cite.

1. 12a.

   Section 5.5:  “In contrast to the pure aeolian (Tomirdiaro, 1996) or glacial (Grosswald, 1998) hypotheses, the proposed concept of nival lithogenesis integrates several of the previously proposed formation concepts.”  “the existence of 'a continuous loess-covered land surface underlain by permanently frozen sea ice' as stated by Tomirdiaro (1996) is not supported by this study.” ↩ ↩

2. 12b.

   Section Abstract:  “The sediments of the Ice Complex are characterized by poorly-sorted silt to fine-sand, buried cryosols, TOC contents of 1.2–4.8 wt%, and very high ground ice content (40–60 wt% absolute).  A second large constituent of the Ice Complex are large syngenetic ice wedges, resulting in a total ice content of the Ice Complex of up to 80 vol%.”  Section 4.4:  On the New Siberian Archipelago:  “At two sites (Stolbovoy and Bel'kovsky Island) typical 1–2 m thick peaty horizons were studied.”  Section 3:  On method, each section.  “was sampled in 0.5–1.0 m intervals.” ↩

3. 12c.

   Section 5.3:  Geochronology and stratigraphy, on the AMS radiocarbon dates:  “Based on the AMS radiocarbon dates, the initiation of Ice Complex formation (Table 5) varies from >55 ka BP on the New Siberian Islands to about 27 ka BP at Cape Mamontov Klyk on the western Laptev Sea coast. …  indicating an estimated initiation of Ice Complex formation at this site at around 80 ka BP.”  “The uppermost boundary of Ice Complex sequences as dated with the AMS radiocarbon method (Table 5) differs between 28 ka BP on the New Siberian Islands and 17–13 ka BP in various other sites.” ↩

Strauss, J. et al.  “Deep Yedoma permafrost: A synthesis of depositional characteristics and carbon vulnerability.”  Earth-Science Reviews 172:75–86.  2017.  A review of studies of Yedoma, the ice-rich, silty permafrost of Siberia, Alaska and north-west Canada, by researchers at institutes in Europe, North America and Russia.  It draws on field studies and a database of radiocarbon ages from more than 50 individual sites, and it concludes that Yedoma formed from a mix of wind-blown, river-borne, slope-washed and snow-borne sediment, with ice growing as the deposit built up.  The article uses it for what the burial sediment is made of and how much silt it holds.

1. 13a.

   Page 79:  The dating base is.  “the largest available database of radiocarbon ages from Yedoma deposits from > 50 individual sites”.  , with 619 Siberian, 75 Alaskan and 19 north-west Canadian dates.  Page 78:  The inputs used in Part 7 are the modern Yedoma domain, 1.4 million km², and the ice content, which the text puts this way:  “the total volume of Yedoma deposits is composed of ~80 vol% ground ice, making ice the major structural component”.  Page 80, table 2:  The 25 m mean deposit thickness comes from Zimov et al. 2006, who used.  “a mean deposit thickness of 25 m, 1,000,000 km² areal coverage, 2.6 wt% total organic carbon (TOC), a bulk density (BD) of 1.65 × 10³ kg/m³, and 50 vol% wedge-ice volume.”  Strauss calls the thickness a first-order estimate, and the calculation in Part 7 inherits that uncertainty. ↩

2. 13b.

   Page 78:  “the maximum extent of the Yedoma domain is estimated to be at least 3.3 million km² during the Last Glacial Maximum.”  That figure depends on Walter et al. 2007's assumption that Yedoma covered 80% of the exposed Arctic shelf, which is an assumption rather than a measurement. ↩

3. 13c.

   The paper says:  “This differs from previous characterizations of classical loess, where coarse silt to fine sand is the dominating component of the deposit.  Even removal of the ice component upon thaw would not result in a deposit with the structural properties of pure loess, as the loss of 80 vol% ground ice, subsidence, and erosion would fundamentally alter the sedimentary structure and stratigraphy.”  Their mechanism:  “we propose that Yedoma deposits have a polygenetic origin. …  the major processes are aeolian deposition, water-related (such as floodplain overbank deposition or alluvial runoff and slope processes), cryogenic weathering and syngenetic ground ice accumulation.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

4. 13d.

   Table S3:  In the supplementary material, Table S3 is titled:  “Yedoma and thermokarst deposit parameters and organic carbon inventory by Strauss et al. (2013) separated into Siberian and North-American (NoA) sub-regions.”  Mean deposit thickness: Yedoma 20 m (Siberia) and 18 m (North America); thermokarst 6 m and 3 m.  The low estimate in Part 7 is 355,800 km² x 20 m + 60,300 km² x 18 m + 656,000 km² x 6 m + 119,000 km² x 3 m = 1.25 x 10⁴ km³.  The accompanying explanation gives the areas:  “Assuming that 70 % of the Yedoma domain is affected by thaw degradation or erosion, the remaining Yedoma deposits cover about 355,800 km² in Siberia and 60,300 km² in Alaska and Northwest Canada. …  the Siberian Yedoma domain includes about 656,000 km² and the North American 119,000 km² with re-frozen thermokarst deposits.” ↩ ↩

Kok, J. F. et al.  “Contribution of the world's main dust source regions to the global cycle of desert dust.”  Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 21(10):8169–8193.  May 27, 2021.  A study that estimates how much desert dust each of the world's main dust regions puts into the air, by combining an ensemble of global aerosol model simulations with observations of dust in the air.  It finds that North African sources supply about half of the dust loading and Asian sources about 40 percent.  The article uses it for the modern dust emission figures and for the nine desert regions that supply the dust.

1. 14a.

   Table 1, page 8174:  In the row labelled.  “All source regions”.  and the column labelled.  “Annual dust emission and deposition rate (×10³ Tg yr⁻¹)”.  , the AeroCom models, a group of global aerosol models, give 1.7 (1.2–3.1), and the inverse model, which is constrained by observations of dust, gives 4.7 (3.4–9.1).  The table's own note says.  “inverse model results are for dust with D ≤ 20 µm, whereas the size range accounted for by AeroCom models differs for each model.” ↩ ↩

2. 14b.

   Table 1, page 8174:  The table's footnote says:  “The fraction of global emissions of desert dust accounted for by the nine source regions is calculated by using simulated global emissions in the latitude band of 50°S–50°N.  This was done to exclude high-latitude dust emissions, which the inverse model does not account for.”  The nine regions are western North Africa, eastern North Africa, the southern Sahara and Sahel, the Middle East and central Asia, East Asia, North America, Australia, South America, and southern Africa.  None is at Siberian latitudes. ↩

Maher, B. A. et al.  “Global connections between aeolian dust, climate and ocean biogeochemistry at the present day and at the last glacial maximum.”  Earth-Science Reviews 99(1–2):61–97.  2010.  A review of wind-blown dust and its effects on climate, both today and at the last glacial maximum, including how iron-bearing dust feeds the ocean.  The article uses it for the glacial rise in dust, which the abstract puts at two to five times the interglacial level.

1. 15a.

   Section Abstract:  “During glacial climate stages, for example, the world was much dustier, with dust fluxes two to five times greater than in interglacial stages.”  The introduction repeats it and attributes the range to Kohfeld and Harrison 2001. ↩ ↩

Guthrie, R. Dale.  Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe.  University of Chicago Press.  1990.  A book about Blue Babe, a frozen steppe bison, by the scientist who dug it out.  Its quoted passages describe how a carcass mummifies slowly over years, and say that a rapid burial comes first.  The article uses it for the mainstream account of how northern mummies form, which both sides accept.

1. 16a.

   Page 71:  “The cartoons showing woolly mammoths frozen in clear glacier ice misrepresent where mummies are found—they occur in silt deposits across unglaciated portions of the north.  Mummification is not just a matter of freezing;  carcasses must be buried by some rapid process.”  Guthrie is not arguing against creationists; he simply never meets the catastrophic or quick-freeze hypothesis. ↩

2. 16b.

   Pages 22–23:  “Underground frost mummification should not be confused with freeze-drying, which occurs when a body is frozen and moisture is removed by sublimation. …  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. …  Year follows year, and the stew becomes more and more desiccated, as ice segregates from it. …  Soft tissue becomes mummified and shrunken down, looking like a desiccated mummy dried in the sun.” ↩

3. 16c.

   Page 78:  “There are simply too many well-preserved bones and large skulls that radiocarbon date to full glacial (Duvanny Yar).  These could not be preserved by a few millimeters of annual eolian loess-fall;  their preservation required large quantities of reworked silt.  The frozen silt we find enclosing these glacial aged bones is water saturated, not dry, drifted eolian material.”  Page 54:  “Frozen mummies and most fossils are found in the reworked silt.” ↩ ↩

4. 16d.

   Page 107:  “After lions abandoned the frozen bison it appears that scavengers arrived and continued to visit the carcass until spring.” ↩

5. 16e.

   Page 88:  “Perhaps, like many present-day carcasses I had seen, Blue Babe died in the winter, froze, and was chewed on and pecked at by an array of scavengers.  Late winter is a common time for ungulates to succumb to accumulated winter debilitation.” ↩

6. 16f.

   Page 94:  “we found canine tooth punctures in the flank skin. …  The puncture marks occurred in pairs, averaging 8.5 cm apart, almost exactly the width of the upper canine teeth measured on a Pleistocene lion in collections at the University of Alaska Museum.”  Page 100:  Guthrie estimates the number of lions:  “around two or three”. ↩

7. 16g.

   Page 6:  On the Berezovka mammoth, Guthrie wrote:  “The animal had about 3.6 inches (90 mm) of fat on its torso, suggesting that it was in good health and that it died in the late autumn, after a good summer's feeding.” ↩

8. 16h.

   Page 27:  “This specimen had gastrointestinal tract contents but very little other soft tissue.  The carcass dated within the Boutellier Interval:  one radiocarbon date was about 42,000 yr B.P. and another 32,000 yr B.P.  The Soviet literature portrays the Shandrin mammoth as a skeleton with an enormous mass of frozen viscera (around 300 kg) among its ribs.” ↩

9. 16i.

   Page 29:  On a viscera-only mammoth, Guthrie wrote:  “Perhaps the plant-filled viscera survived intact because it froze before it could be scavenged and spread apart.  Certainly, if it had not frozen it would have been quickly dispersed by animals.” ↩

Lister, Adrian, and Paul Bahn.  Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age.  University of California Press / Frances Lincoln.  Revised edition.  2007.  A general book on mammoths, with a count of the frozen Siberian finds and an account of the gold mines that uncover frozen carcasses and mostly lose them to science.  The article uses it for how few frozen finds were known in 1933, and for the weights of the tusks found at Berezovka.

1. 17a.

   Page 58:  “The total of frozen mammoth finds known from the whole of Siberia was reckoned in 1933 to be only 34 for the previous 225 years, and a mere handful of those were complete, the rest being fragments or skeletons.” ↩

2. 17b.

   Page 59:  “even today, probably only a small fraction of finds are reported.  According to Siberian geologists, work at the gold mines uncovers frozen remains every year, but since the arrival of scientists can delay and complicate the mining, most are lost to science.”  Page 60:  “the frozen carcasses known are merely the 'tip of the iceberg.'” ↩

3. 17c.

   Page 52:  Quoting Pfizenmayer:  “Some time before the mammoth body came in view I smelt its anything but pleasant odor—like the smell of a badly kept stable heavily blended with that of offal.” ↩

4. 17d.

   Page 52:  “A Lamut deer hunter had first spotted a huge mammoth tusk, weighing about 175 lb (80 kg), and then, below it, the head of a second mammoth protruding from the ground, with one smaller tusk of about 65 lb (30 kg).”  Page 51:  A pair reported to Ides:  “weighing a total of 432 lb (196 kg).” ↩

Farrand, William R.  “Frozen Mammoths and Modern Geology.”  Science 133(3455):729–735.  Mar 17, 1961.  A review by a Pleistocene geologist at Lamont Geological Observatory and Columbia University, written to bring the frozen-mammoth evidence up to date and to refute the popular articles of the time.  It says no comprehensive paper had appeared since Tolmachoff's 1929 summary, and that Sanderson's thesis disregards the actual observations of scientists and explorers.  The article uses it as the scientific reply to Sanderson.

1. 18a.

   Page 731:  “There have been at least 39 discoveries of frozen mammoth remains, with some soft parts preserved, but only four of these were nearly complete.”  Page 729:  The summary printed before the article's text, called the standfirst, says:  “The death of the giants can be explained as a hazard of tundra life, without evoking catastrophic events.” ↩

2. 18b.

   Page 734:  “The well-preserved specimens, with food in their stomachs and between their teeth, must have died suddenly, probably from asphyxia resulting from drowning in a lake or bog or from being buried alive by a mudflow or cave-in of a river bank.  Since only the heavy-footed giants of the fauna—the mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses—have been found in a frozen state, it is very unlikely that a catastrophic congelation occurred in Siberia.”  On Berezovka specifically:  “The Berezovka mammoth is commonly regarded (12) as having fallen as a cliff slumped beneath it;  its broken bones attest to such a fall.  Presumably it then suffocated as it was buried alive by the caving bluff.” ↩

3. 18c.

   Page 734:  “Only four of the 39 known frozen carcasses are by any means complete, and all of the cadavers were rotten and somewhat mutilated prior to being frozen.  More than 50,000 mammoths lived in Siberia during late Pleistocene time.”  Page 733:  His conclusion:  “All the evidence now at hand supports the conclusions of previous workers that no catastrophic event was responsible for the death and preservation of the frozen woolly mammoths.” ↩

4. 18d.

   Page 734:  “So far no other members of the contemporary Eurasian fauna—stag, horse, reindeer, antelope, musk ox, and so on (16)—have been found frozen and well preserved.  That only the bulky and awkward 'giants' of the fauna are so preserved points to some peculiarity of their physique as a contributing factor.” ↩

5. 18e.

   Page 732:  “Marine fossils have never been discovered in deposits containing frozen mammoths (2).” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Frozen Mammoth Carcasses in Siberia.”  Frozen in Time: Woolly Mammoths, the Ice Age, and the Biblical Key to Their Secrets.  Master Books.  2004.  Chapter 1 of Oard's book Frozen in Time.  It counts the known carcasses and tusks in Siberia, and it divides a Russian estimate of buried tusks by the weight of one tusk to reach five million mammoths.  The article uses it for the population figures that popular creationist writing repeats.

1. 19a.

   Chapter 1:  Vereshchagin, as Oard quotes him:  “along the 600-mile coastal shallows between the Yana and Kolyma [rivers] lie more than half a million tons of mammoth tusks with another 150,000 tons in the bottom of the lakes of the coastal plain.” ↩

2. 19b.

   Chapter 1:  “If each tusk weighs 100 pounds (45 kg), a reasonable estimate, Vereshchagin's numbers would suggest that five million mammoths are buried in this region!  Is he exaggerating?  If he is, it probably isn't by much.” ↩

3. 19c.

   Chapter 15:  This passage is from chapter 15 of Frozen in Time, not from chapter 1.  “Tolmachoff estimated that the number of carcasses with some remaining soft parts is probably hundreds or possibly thousands of times more than was known in 1929.  This would bring the possible number of carcasses up to about 50,000.  This is still a small number, compared to the many millions that have been entombed in the permafrost.” ↩

4. 19d.

   Chapter 1:  “The number of woolly mammoth individuals fossilized worldwide probably exceeds 15 million.”  No source is given for this figure anywhere in the chapter. ↩

5. 19e.

   Chapter 1:  “almost 50,000 mammoth tusks are said to have been found in Siberia between 1660 and 1915.”  “Since 1940, he [Vereshchagin] has identified approximately a million bone fragments from many types of animals found within the permafrost of Eurasia.” ↩

Vereshchagin, N. K.  “The mammoth 'cemeteries' of north-east Siberia.”  Polar Record 17(106):3–12.  1974.  A 1974 article in Polar Record on the mammoth 'cemeteries' of north-east Siberia.  The article uses it because nobody in the debate has read the tonnage estimate itself, and this is the primary source for the half-million-tons-of-tusks figure on which every creationist 'millions of mammoths' claim depends. ↩

Kosintsev, P. A. et al.  “The intestinal contents of a baby woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius Blumenbach, 1799) from the Yuribey River (Yamal Peninsula).”  Doklady Biological Sciences 432:209–211.  2010.  A short paper on the intestinal contents of a baby woolly mammoth from the Yuribey River on the Yamal Peninsula.  Its last sentence argues that the calf drowned, and Fisher et al. 2012 reject that argument.  The article cites its drowning verdict against the asphyxia account.

1. 21a.

   Page 211:  The paper's last sentence:  “The bottom sediments in its intestine indicate that it drowned in a water body.”  Fisher et al. 2012, which reproduces this sentence, names its page, and then rejects the argument behind it. ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Extinction of the Woolly Mammoth.”  Frozen in Time (chapter 16).  Master Books.  2004.  A creationist chapter on how the Siberian mammoths died.  It argues that cold, wind and drought in the deglaciation killed many of them, that dust storms buried some, and that the silt they lie in may be reworked mud left after the Flood.  The article uses it as the post-Flood young-earth account, which contradicts Walt Brown's Flood account.

1. 22a.

   Chapter 16:  “The strong, cold winds during deglaciation whipped up multiple dust storms that blew across Siberia. …  It is possible that a woolly mammoth could have been completely buried and suffocated in one gigantic dust storm.  As a result, some of these animals could have been left in a general standing position, braced by the dust around them.” ↩

2. 22b.

   Chapter 16:  “Is there any proof from the carcasses that they died in dust storms?  Other than the sediment surrounding the mammoths, there is little evidence from the carcasses, themselves.  This lack of evidence is probably because the researchers have not looked for dust in the lungs area, or the evidence could have been obscured because of the surrounding loess.” ↩

3. 22c.

   Chapter 16:  “Now it is accepted that the yedomas and muck are composed of loess,”.  Quoting Vereshchagin and Tomirdiaro:  “Of particular interest for paleozoologists is the 'edoma.' . . . This is actually a loess layer, as a rule containing the largest amount of remains of Late Pleistocene animals.” ↩

4. 22d.

   Chapter 16:  “It is also possible that much mud was left on the land after the Genesis flood receded.  This mud could have been reworked into wind-blown deposits at the end of the Ice Age.” ↩

5. 22e.

   Chapter 16:  “However, there does not seem to be enough sources for the abundant loess in Siberia and Alaska.” ↩

6. 22f.

   Chapter 16:  Quoting Vereshchagin:  “One important factor was the fall of loess on the cold wet ground.  However, this deposition could hardly have exceeded 2–3 cm [one inch] a year and, at that rate, it would have taken 20–30 years to cover a mammoth, during which time the bones and tusks would have been almost entirely destroyed by atmospheric processes.”  Oard's answer:  “By compressing the time scale into a 100- to 200-year period, the extensive sand and loess deposits over many areas of the world indicate a major disaster, far worse than the storms of the Dust Bowl era in the 1930s.” ↩

7. 22g.

   Chapter 16:  “So the freezing of the carcasses could take several days and still leave the stomach contents only partially decayed.” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “The extinction of the woolly mammoth: was it a quick freeze?”  Journal of Creation 14(3):24–34.  Dec 2000.  A technical paper by Michael Oard in the Journal of Creation, republished at creation.com on 28 January 2006.  It is the technical version of chapters 15 and 16 of his book Frozen in Time, so it is cited in preference to the book where both say the same thing.  The article uses it for Oard's stratigraphic argument against the Flood-freeze model.

1. 23a.

   The eight settings are:  “1) glacial till near the edge of the ice sheets, 2) river flood plain debris, 3) river terraces, 4) tarpits, 5) caves or rockshelters, 6) loess, 7) sinkholes, and 8) peat bogs. …  Such surficial features and deposits would be virtually impossible to form during the Flood and must be post-Flood.” ↩

2. 23b.

   “the Beringian animals are buried in unconsolidated surficial sediments overlying lithified sedimentary rocks.  If the animals were killed by an ice or hail dump from space during the early Flood, as envisioned by Dillow and Brown, the animals should be found in the lower portion of the sedimentary strata, a little above crystalline rocks.  This surficial sediment with indications of post-Flood processes lies upon hundreds of meters of consolidated sedimentary rock that a large majority of creationists would attribute to the Flood.”  He also charges Dillow and Brown with specific errors of fact, among them the claim.  “that there is over 1,200 m of 'muck' containing animal and vegetative remains.” ↩

Young, Davis A., and Ralph F. Stearley.  The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth.  IVP Academic.  2008.  A book by two Christian geologists who hold an old earth and reject young-earth Flood geology.  Its ninth chapter, on fossil graveyards, weighs Michael Oard's mammoth arguments and finds his dust-storm case weak.  The article quotes both halves of that verdict, accepting the mortality case and rejecting the dust storms.

1. 24a.

   Page 278:  “Oard has marshaled many lines of evidence to support the notion that the northern Siberian and Alaskan mammoths did not all die at once.  These include the general lack of carcasses as opposed to cleaned skeletal remains;  symptoms of scavenging on both carcasses and bones;  the presence of abundant fly pupae in bones and carcasses indicating rotting;  and evidences such as stomach contents or pelt condition suggesting that animals died during different seasons.  Oard's arguments, which summarize many painstaking studies by mainstream paleontologists, are cogent and irrefutable.” ↩

2. 24b.

   Page 278:  “Although Oard has made a strong case for the existence of the mammoth steppe ecosystem, and against an instantaneous 'quick-freeze' scenario for its demise, his arguments for extinction at the hands of several catastrophic dust storms are very weak.  In fact, he has conceded that numerous mammoth fossil finds occur in old stream beds or in collapsed soil layers.  The presence of loess, that is, glacially ground, windblown silt, over much of the arctic steppe is not in and of itself evidence for catastrophic dust storms as the agent of extinction.”  Page 279:  The sentence runs on across the page break:  “Pleistocene megafauna, but he has not come close to demonstrating that vast dust-storms were the immediate agent of death and preservation.” ↩

3. 24c.

   Page 279:  “The frozen Siberian mammoths are admittedly intriguing, but the evidence for rotting of carcasses in place prior to burial, as well as the nature of the enclosing sediments, argues for some sort of regional prevalence for miring in solifluction zones.  Although all of these examples are fascinating, they do not demand catastrophic deposition of thousands of feet of sediment over the span of one year.” ↩

Huneeus, N. et al.  “Global dust model intercomparison in AeroCom phase I.”  Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 11(15):7781–7816.  2011.  A comparison of 15 global aerosol models from the AeroCom project, each checked against observations of desert dust.  Its budgets put the models' annual dust emission between 500 and 4400 teragrams, a wider range than the 1000 to 3000 usually attributed to global models.  The article uses it to show how far apart the models are on global dust.

1. 25a.

   Page 7789:  “We computed the global model dust budgets for each one of the models (Table 3).  The annual emissions of the AeroCom models in Phase I are between 500 and 4400 Tg yr⁻¹.  This range exceeds the range of 1000–3000 Tg yr⁻¹ usually attributed to global models (e.g. Zender et al., 2004).” ↩

Lambert, F. et al.  “Dust-climate couplings over the past 800,000 years from the EPICA Dome C ice core.”  Nature 452(7187):616–619.  2008.  A research letter in Nature that measured windblown dust in the EPICA Dome C ice core in East Antarctica, a record covering eight climate cycles over the last 800,000 years.  It found that dust deposition at that one Antarctic site rose about 25 times in each glacial period, and its explanation involves stronger South American dust sources and a longer airborne lifetime, which comes from a reduced hydrological cycle and so less washout of dust from the air.  The article uses the figure only for the glacial change at one site, not as a global emission rate.

1. 26a.

   Page 616:  “All eight glacial periods appear similar in magnitude and show an average increase in dust flux by a factor of about 25, with glacial maxima displaying fluxes of at least 12 mg m⁻² yr⁻¹.”  “We propose that the observed 25-fold increase in glacial dust flux over all eight glacial periods can be…” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Analysis of Walt Brown's Flood model.”  Creation Ministries International.  Mar 19, 2013.  Oard's judgement that Brown's marine-fossil test.  “likely fails in the New Siberian Islands”.  , where permafrost overlies marine rocks and coal.  This conflicts with Farrand 1961, p. 732, and the conflict is unresolved here.  A 13,000-word critique of Walt Brown's hydroplate Flood model, posted by Creation Ministries International, a young-earth organisation.  Its author is a full-time creationist field geologist who has also written against the rival catastrophic plate tectonics model, and the article argues that the mammoths died at the end of the post-Flood Ice Age, not at the start of the Flood.  The article uses it for Oard's verdict on Brown's marine-fossil test. ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “Mammoths Thrive Early in the Post-Flood Ice Age.”  Frozen in Time (chapter 14).  Master Books.  2004.  Chapter 14:  “1.3 billion mammoths living three hundred years after the Flood!”  A creationist chapter on how mammoths could have lived in unglaciated Siberia and Alaska during the short post-Flood Ice Age, which also carries his climate argument for an unglaciated, permafrost-free Siberia and saiga-antelope evidence for a milder Ice Age north.  Its population arithmetic, from Addo elephant-park doubling rates, reaches 1.3 billion mammoths three hundred years after the Flood.  The article tests that population figure against the food the animals would have needed. ↩