Frozen in Time: Remarkable Mammoth and Rhino Discoveries in Alaska and Siberia

[Jules18]

There have been remarkable discoveries of mammoth and wooly rhinoceros found in ice from Alaska and Siberia. Specimens with flesh, skin, and hair intact have been found. Some of these finds suggest that they were flash frozen, with food still in the mouth and stomach.

I found this in an article about fossilization and it kind of scared me - doesn't this remind you of the movie The Day After Tomorrow?

 

[Mentallic]

To think this has any relation to The Day After Tomorrow is ridiculous!
More than likely, the flash freezing of these fossils occurred due to Freeze's ice ray in Batman the movie.

But then again, I'm being sarcastic... so honestly, I'm not sure what to think on this subject.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I found this in an article about fossilization and it kind of scared me - doesn't this remind you of the movie The Day After Tomorrow?

How about providing the link to the article?

 

[Evo]

Many of the animals fell into icy lakes, rivers, etc... and ended up frozen. I will try to find more about how they froze, although Andre is out expert on these mammals.

You might like this article about the recent baby mammoth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070722113641.htm

This is what I believe you are referring to

Preserved frozen remains of woolly mammoths, with much soft tissue remaining, have been found in the northern parts of Siberia. This is a rare occurrence, essentially requiring the animal to have been buried rapidly in liquid or semi-solids such as silt, mud and icy water which then froze. This may have occurred in a number of ways. Mammoths may have been trapped in bogs or quicksands and either died of starvation or exposure, or drowning if they sank under the surface. The evidence of undigested food in the stomach and seed pods still in the mouth of many of the specimens suggests that neither starvation nor exposure are likely. The maturity of this ingested vegetation places the time period in autumn rather than in spring when flowers would be expected.[19] The animals may have fallen through ice into small ponds or potholes, entombing them. Many are certainly known to have been killed in rivers, perhaps through being swept away by river floods. In one location, by the Berelekh River in Yakutia in Siberia, more than 9,000 bones from at least 156 individual mammoths have been found in a single spot, apparently having been swept there by the current.[20]

[19]^ E. W. Pfizenmayer was one of the scientists who recovered and studied a mammoth that was found at the river Berezovka in the early 1900s. He wrote: “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.” See Pfizenmayer, E. W. (1939). Siberian Man and Mammoth. London: Blackie and Son.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth

 

[Andre]

Surprisingly enough, to date there has not been an elaborate conclusive research about the type of conservation of these mammoths -at least not that Dick Mol knowns of. And of course there are a lot of rural legends (as opposed to urban legends ).

Some facts,

- other detailed research about the conditions in Siberia in the past explicitely exclude any day-after-tomorrow-scenario's. See for instance Hubberten et al 2004.

- All mammoth mummies have different carbon datings with many thousend years differences. For instance about the baby mammoth that Evo linked to, we have a small paragraph in the book I translated, referring to it as well:

The best and most complete mammoth carcass ever discovered was on May 14, 2007. A reindeer herder named Yuri Khudi has found an entirely complete carcass of a baby mammoth, a female individual, near the Yuribei River on the Yamal Peninsula in arctic Siberia.

This carcass belongs to the collection of the Salekhard Museum in the sity of Salekhard now. It has been radiocarbon dated to 36690(+320,-280) BP ... ( Lab number GrA-35690).

Another famous mummy, the Jarkov Mammoth died a little over 20,000 years ago. But with a cataclysmic scenario, you would expect all mummies with the same date.

Contrary to belief, only relative small portions of the full grown animals were preserved, it the case of large adult animals it's mostly the head and limbs and indeed intestines. Other parts are rather putrified.

Also take note that these mummies in Siberia had to endure the Holocene Thermal Optimum, when the treeline advanced to the coastline of the Arctic ocean http://epic.awi.de/Publications/Mac2000c.pdf .

Highly recommended http://cio.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/2006/QuatIntMol2/2006QuatIntMol2.pdf

In short we know a lot more about pieces of the puzzle, but not how it fits together.

 

[hypatia]

Jules18, that was a great question. I recall at one time having the same sort of unsettling feeling and was really glad to find out that entire herds were not flash frozen.
Thanks Andre, as always for the great links.

 

[Andre]

You're welcome Hypatia,

Actually it's a shame that the reality of the Siberian mammoth steppe of the late Pleistocene is so unknown that these flash frozen rural legends can linger on.

 

[Jules18]

Thanks for the replies, guys.
The article is actually from this page:
http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/how_are_fossils_formed.html
The excerpt is under the second subtitle.