Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2004

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Claim CC361.2:

Source:

Response:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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).

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