The Mystery of the "Frozen Mammoths"
- Thread starter bob b
- Start date
bob b said:
What is the title of this thread?
Sure, you wanna start renaming animals, be my guest. What now am I to call the Pug lying at my feet?
You think that Arctic animals of the past were unable to find food and water [which would be quite a hinderance to surviving in the arctic] but somehow have recently evolved that newfound talent?
His claim is that the woolly mammoths hair/fur would cake up with snow. The Musk ox, with similar hair/fur does not cake up so his dopey theory is handily discarded.
It is very relevant but you choose to dismiss it because it shatters your argument.
No question about it, the Arctic was cold when woolly mammoths lived there. I already provided you a link to the USGS site which confirms this. They are there to help you 'Learn some science'. :devil:
Irrelevant.
Not so, it is entirly unrelated.
Hunting to extinction.
Nope, there is no connection.
I am not surprised that BillyBob wants to ignore the mystery of the permafrost depth and pretend that this has nothing to do with the mystery of the frozen mammoths.
Why?
Because there is no discussion in the literature, probably for a similar reason: it might destroy people's comfortable cocoon where they can only think about their nice little solution which does not require them to consider other, and perhaps better, possible alternatives.
Why?
Because there is no discussion in the literature, probably for a similar reason: it might destroy people's comfortable cocoon where they can only think about their nice little solution which does not require them to consider other, and perhaps better, possible alternatives.
bob b said:
I am not ignoring the permafrost, I am just trying to stick to the topic of this thread. On the other hand, now that you have had your hat handed to you about the woolly mammoths, you suddenly want to forget all about the very thing this thread is about [check the title] and ramble on about the depth of the permafrost and pretend there is a connection between the two.
I don't think the "fresh" mammoths have had the geology underneath them explored enough.bob b said:
And secondly, I think the deep permafrost had more to do with the properties of drifting than quantity. In other words, the depth of permafrost averages a great deal less than 5000 feat, but covers all the northern parts of the land in the northern hemisphere.
death2impiety
Maximeee's Husband
Mammoth meat is surely the rarest delicacy in the world. Do you think any post-flood humans have gotten to sample it?
death2impiety
Maximeee's Husband
BillyBob said:
[captian obvious]
Just because you don't understand the connection doesn't mean there isn't one.
[/captian obvious]
You guys are claiming:
The Arctic wasn't cold when the mammoths lived [even though it was during the last ice age].
That mammoths couldn't have survived in a cold climate [even though millions of animals do today]
There was a flood.
The flood drowned all the mammoths [even though their remains date from various times over periods of tens of thousands of years].
Most of these claims have been made based on 'evidence' which has easily been refuted. Now you want to continue piling on baseless claims and insist that the permafrost and the mammoth extinction are connected. The only thing that connects them is cold weather, which is to be expected in the
:sozo: ARCTIC
The Arctic wasn't cold when the mammoths lived [even though it was during the last ice age].
That mammoths couldn't have survived in a cold climate [even though millions of animals do today]
There was a flood.
The flood drowned all the mammoths [even though their remains date from various times over periods of tens of thousands of years].
Most of these claims have been made based on 'evidence' which has easily been refuted. Now you want to continue piling on baseless claims and insist that the permafrost and the mammoth extinction are connected. The only thing that connects them is cold weather, which is to be expected in the
:sozo: ARCTIC
Real questions to which science has as yet no solid answers regarding Mammoths.
There have been several Mammoths found frozen solid. The meat was still good to eat! Though it was tough. Fresh frozen plant life was found in the stomachs and mouths. The plants could be identified. Buttercup was one. It is a weed of the north temperate zone but tolerates the latitude of Labador which is pretty far north. It is not evidence of the mammoth being a warm weather animal. The really big question was what could possibly cool an animal that weighs several tons quickly enough that the meat was not destroyed by ice crystals. Bob mentions a super cold thing cooling by direct contact and he is most likely right. The problem is that we have no experience with a naturaly occuring super cold condition like this. Let me clarify. Dropping the mammoth suddenly into the cold of an antarctic winter is not half cold enough. The frozen mammoths are evidence of a catastrophy of some sort that involved sudden masses of super cold gas hitting the surface of the earth.
One theory suggested that a very large volcano would blast masses of gas up into space where it would be cooled to near absolute zero and fall back to earth. The recent discovery of super volcanos might support this. Another idea would be super storms like those in the recent movie about global warming causing a sudden iceage. In that senario the very low pressure of the storm eye caused atmosphere from the edge of space to touch the surface. I find that one less likely.
The truth is we just can't know yet. We will eventually. Science will keep on collecting and correlating data until the mechanism is figured out. Mankind has only been doing systematic science for a few centuries. One of the weaknesses of the scientific method is that it can't tell you much about unique or near unique events. It deals with averages and probablities. These assume that there is a large sample of events to use for data.
There have been several Mammoths found frozen solid. The meat was still good to eat! Though it was tough. Fresh frozen plant life was found in the stomachs and mouths. The plants could be identified. Buttercup was one. It is a weed of the north temperate zone but tolerates the latitude of Labador which is pretty far north. It is not evidence of the mammoth being a warm weather animal. The really big question was what could possibly cool an animal that weighs several tons quickly enough that the meat was not destroyed by ice crystals. Bob mentions a super cold thing cooling by direct contact and he is most likely right. The problem is that we have no experience with a naturaly occuring super cold condition like this. Let me clarify. Dropping the mammoth suddenly into the cold of an antarctic winter is not half cold enough. The frozen mammoths are evidence of a catastrophy of some sort that involved sudden masses of super cold gas hitting the surface of the earth.
One theory suggested that a very large volcano would blast masses of gas up into space where it would be cooled to near absolute zero and fall back to earth. The recent discovery of super volcanos might support this. Another idea would be super storms like those in the recent movie about global warming causing a sudden iceage. In that senario the very low pressure of the storm eye caused atmosphere from the edge of space to touch the surface. I find that one less likely.
The truth is we just can't know yet. We will eventually. Science will keep on collecting and correlating data until the mechanism is figured out. Mankind has only been doing systematic science for a few centuries. One of the weaknesses of the scientific method is that it can't tell you much about unique or near unique events. It deals with averages and probablities. These assume that there is a large sample of events to use for data.
Sealeaf said:
Nice balanced job.
Most scientists admit that the "mystery" is still a mystery. They are working on what caused the wooly mammoth, as well as many other mammals, to become extinct around the same general timeframe.
A new theory is being advanced that they were overcome by an unknown disease of some sort. Expeditions to the arctic are being mounted to gather samples of material to test this theory. The hope is that the freezing cold might have preserved the unknown bacteria or viruses that could have been responsible for the extinctions.
Of course this theory fails to explain all the evidence, but that is par for the course for all the theories advanced so far (except Walt's?).
Sealeaf said:
Preserved remains, genetic evidence
Preserved frozen remains of woolly mammoths 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. They may have fallen through frozen 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.
To date, thirty-nine preserved bodies have been found, but only four of them are complete. In most cases the flesh shows signs of decay before its freezing and later desiccation. Stories abound about frozen mammoth corpses that were still edible once defrosted, but the original sources (e.g. William R. Farrand's article in Science 133 [March 17, 1961]:729-735) indicate that the corpses were in fact terribly decayed, and the stench so unbearable that only the dogs accompanying the finders showed any interest in the flesh.
Ran across this one that I had forgotten about.
I wonder if it was a hoax. Anyone know?
----------
Raising the Mammoth
Herewith an article on a frozen mammoth, from the excellent Australian magazine The Bulletin.
A two hour documentary of the find and exhumation was screened on cable television's Discovery Channel in a rare global prime-time screening of Raising the Mammoth on March 12 2000 in 146 countries (including Australia) and 23 languages.
http://donsmaps.com/mammoth.html
I wonder if it was a hoax. Anyone know?
----------
Raising the Mammoth
Herewith an article on a frozen mammoth, from the excellent Australian magazine The Bulletin.
A two hour documentary of the find and exhumation was screened on cable television's Discovery Channel in a rare global prime-time screening of Raising the Mammoth on March 12 2000 in 146 countries (including Australia) and 23 languages.
http://donsmaps.com/mammoth.html
BillyBob said:
Update from National Geographic. Ooh the stench was unbearable.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_mammoth.html
From the article: "Buiges has managed to recover virtually the entire body of a woolly mammoth, which had lain snap-frozen for millennia in, the Siberian permafrost. Carbon dating suggests it died more than 20,000 Years ago: it was a male aged 46, tests have revealed."
I guess this one died long before the flood....
I guess this one died long before the flood....
Woolly Mammoth Study Shows Complexity of Evolution
Hillary Mayell
for National Geographic News
November 1, 2001
The woolly mammoth is the rock star of Ice Age mammals. It's been immortalized in Stone Age cave paintings and carvings and in museum displays as the quintessential Ice Age animal.
How did this Ice Age icon evolve from an elephant-type species grazing in Africa to a highly specialized Arctic dweller?
Two researchers studying the fossil record of European and Siberian mammoths have traced the evolution of the woolly mammoth. The research has raised a few questions about current evolutionary theories.
"Our study has shown that the origin and evolution of the mammoth is not as simple as many have believed until now," said Andrei Sher, a paleontologist with the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow. "The real story here is how much more complicated evolution is."
The evolution of woolly mammoths in Europe, said Sher, was not just a local response to environmental changes, but also involved a complex interplay with northern populations from Siberia.
Adrian Lister, a paleontologist at University College London, collaborated in the study. "With the woolly mammoth," he said, "we have an example of a fairly generalized elephant species living in a tropical climate evolving into a highly specialized, hairy Ice Age animal in the far North."
Lister said he and Sher conducted the study because they were interested in how a new species arises. "To put it very simply, does evolutionary change happen in bursts in local areas and then spread out to other regions," Lister asked, "or does it happen in gradual increments through time, with the species advancing everywhere?"
Lister and Sher are co-authors of a report on the study published in the November 2 issue of the journal Science.
Tracking Mammoths
The earliest known mammoths originated in southern and eastern Africa around four million years ago. They migrated north and dispersed widely across Eurasia, from Western Europe to Siberia.
The mammoth went through three distinct stages in Europe.
The ancestral mammoth, Mammuthus meridionalis, roamed Europe during the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene, about 2.6 million to 700,000 years ago.
The steppe mammoth, M. trogontherii, lived about 700,000 to 500,000 years ago. It was eventually succeeded by the woolly mammoth, M. primigenius, which lived from about 350,000 to 10,000 years ago, at which point most mammoths became extinct.
At the two intervals of major transition—from ancestral to steppe mammoth, and steppe to woolly mammoth—both species existed at the same time.
Distinctive evolutionary changes often can be linked to feeding patterns, so Lister and Sher looked for evolutionary changes in the fossil skulls and teeth of mammoths.
As the mammoth moved from ancestral to steppe to woolly forms, the skull and jaw became progressively shorter and higher. The height of the molar crowns increased, as did the number of enamel plates in the molars, and the tooth enamel thinned.
The scientists believe these changes occurred because of a shift in diet—from soft leaves of a wooded habitat to tougher grasses that sprang up as the climate became progressively colder during periods of glaciation.
Siberian Influences
After they established the evolutionary sequence of mammoths in Europe, Sher and Lister compared their findings with the fossil record in Siberia. The Siberian fossils show morphological changes similar to those found in Europe, but the new forms in Siberia occurred much earlier than they did in Europe.
"It's been long known that Siberian mammals lived in very harsh permafrost conditions at high latitudes as many as two million years ago," said Sher. "They had to adapt to the Arctic climate much earlier than the animals in Europe."
As Europe underwent periods of glaciation, the habitat of the northern animals expanded. They gradually migrated south from Siberia into Europe, co-existing with their European cousins.
The Siberian mammoths prospered because they were better adapted to the cold and the change in diet. "They either completely replaced the ancestral forms or there was intermingling or hybridization, with the Siberian form coming to predominate," said Lister.
"What we can say," he added, "is that there were long periods of relatively no change interspersed with times of quite rapid change, and these occurred in response to both changes in climate and migration from Siberia."
The study by Sher and Lister is the first to establish such a detailed continuous fossil sequence for a large terrestrial animal. "The fossil record for the woolly mammoth is fairly extensive, both through time and in geographical sampling," said Lister.
This, combined with the refinement of dating techniques, has shown that what initially looked like a gradual change over a long period of time was much more complex.
"We're now at a point where we can observe the origin of the species, which is the title of Darwin's book," said Lister. "Darwin provided the general framework for thinking about evolution, but now we can get into the nitty-gritty of it."
Hillary Mayell
for National Geographic News
November 1, 2001
The woolly mammoth is the rock star of Ice Age mammals. It's been immortalized in Stone Age cave paintings and carvings and in museum displays as the quintessential Ice Age animal.
How did this Ice Age icon evolve from an elephant-type species grazing in Africa to a highly specialized Arctic dweller?
Two researchers studying the fossil record of European and Siberian mammoths have traced the evolution of the woolly mammoth. The research has raised a few questions about current evolutionary theories.
"Our study has shown that the origin and evolution of the mammoth is not as simple as many have believed until now," said Andrei Sher, a paleontologist with the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow. "The real story here is how much more complicated evolution is."
The evolution of woolly mammoths in Europe, said Sher, was not just a local response to environmental changes, but also involved a complex interplay with northern populations from Siberia.
Adrian Lister, a paleontologist at University College London, collaborated in the study. "With the woolly mammoth," he said, "we have an example of a fairly generalized elephant species living in a tropical climate evolving into a highly specialized, hairy Ice Age animal in the far North."
Lister said he and Sher conducted the study because they were interested in how a new species arises. "To put it very simply, does evolutionary change happen in bursts in local areas and then spread out to other regions," Lister asked, "or does it happen in gradual increments through time, with the species advancing everywhere?"
Lister and Sher are co-authors of a report on the study published in the November 2 issue of the journal Science.
Tracking Mammoths
The earliest known mammoths originated in southern and eastern Africa around four million years ago. They migrated north and dispersed widely across Eurasia, from Western Europe to Siberia.
The mammoth went through three distinct stages in Europe.
The ancestral mammoth, Mammuthus meridionalis, roamed Europe during the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene, about 2.6 million to 700,000 years ago.
The steppe mammoth, M. trogontherii, lived about 700,000 to 500,000 years ago. It was eventually succeeded by the woolly mammoth, M. primigenius, which lived from about 350,000 to 10,000 years ago, at which point most mammoths became extinct.
At the two intervals of major transition—from ancestral to steppe mammoth, and steppe to woolly mammoth—both species existed at the same time.
Distinctive evolutionary changes often can be linked to feeding patterns, so Lister and Sher looked for evolutionary changes in the fossil skulls and teeth of mammoths.
As the mammoth moved from ancestral to steppe to woolly forms, the skull and jaw became progressively shorter and higher. The height of the molar crowns increased, as did the number of enamel plates in the molars, and the tooth enamel thinned.
The scientists believe these changes occurred because of a shift in diet—from soft leaves of a wooded habitat to tougher grasses that sprang up as the climate became progressively colder during periods of glaciation.
Siberian Influences
After they established the evolutionary sequence of mammoths in Europe, Sher and Lister compared their findings with the fossil record in Siberia. The Siberian fossils show morphological changes similar to those found in Europe, but the new forms in Siberia occurred much earlier than they did in Europe.
"It's been long known that Siberian mammals lived in very harsh permafrost conditions at high latitudes as many as two million years ago," said Sher. "They had to adapt to the Arctic climate much earlier than the animals in Europe."
As Europe underwent periods of glaciation, the habitat of the northern animals expanded. They gradually migrated south from Siberia into Europe, co-existing with their European cousins.
The Siberian mammoths prospered because they were better adapted to the cold and the change in diet. "They either completely replaced the ancestral forms or there was intermingling or hybridization, with the Siberian form coming to predominate," said Lister.
"What we can say," he added, "is that there were long periods of relatively no change interspersed with times of quite rapid change, and these occurred in response to both changes in climate and migration from Siberia."
The study by Sher and Lister is the first to establish such a detailed continuous fossil sequence for a large terrestrial animal. "The fossil record for the woolly mammoth is fairly extensive, both through time and in geographical sampling," said Lister.
This, combined with the refinement of dating techniques, has shown that what initially looked like a gradual change over a long period of time was much more complex.
"We're now at a point where we can observe the origin of the species, which is the title of Darwin's book," said Lister. "Darwin provided the general framework for thinking about evolution, but now we can get into the nitty-gritty of it."