While the reason for the Ice Age is still unknown to conventional scientists, the frozen mammoth carcasses discovered in Siberia have piqued our interest for ages. These corpses may contain skin, hair, and internal organs, including an intact heart with blood inside.
Reports of these findings pique everyone’s interest for a variety of reasons. One of the New Siberian Islands, off the shore of the Arctic Ocean, is said to comprise largely mammoth bones. Thousands of ivory tusks have been excavated and shipped from Siberia over the years, resulting in a profitable ivory trade. Scientists are baffled as to why these animals thrived in Siberia and how they died. We’re fascinated by stories about frozen carcasses containing meat that’s fit to eat.
As a result of these unexpected finds, many questions arise. What draws the woolly mammoth, bison, woolly rhinoceros, and horse to Siberia? Siberia is now a bleak, blizzard-ravaged wilderness. How did the animals survive the bitterly cold winters? What were they going to eat? Where would the creatures find the massive amounts of water they require while the country is encased in snow and ice? Every winter, the rivers are covered with many feet of ice. The most perplexing question is how the mammoths and their associates died in large numbers and how they became frozen in permafrost.
Various clues concerning their environment at the time of death have been uncovered and examined. Scientists identified the woolly mammoth’s last meal after discovering partially preserved stomach plants in some of the carcasses. Solving one riddle only leads to many. They were perplexed about how the stomach contents remained partially rotted as the animals froze. This is a concern since freezing large animals like elephants take a long time. A sudden freeze occurred to me.
Birds Eye Frozen Foods Company calculated an astounding -150°F (-100°C) a few years ago to match this theory with reality. The scientists were perplexed once more. How could such temperatures be attained on Earth, especially as they appeared to be in a calm environment before the sudden freeze?
Many hypotheses have been proposed. One of the most popular is that the hairy elephants were happily grazing on grass and buttercups when they were hit by a massive freezing storm sweeping in from the Arctic Ocean. Millions of them instantaneously froze. Because this sudden freeze has never been observed, some unusual and innovative theories have been presented. One question usually seems to lead to another.
Frozen carcass puzzles
As if the existence of frozen carcasses wasn’t enough of a mystery, numerous elements of the corpses are pretty perplexing.
Several carcasses and skeletons have been discovered in a general standing stance. The animal appears to have died in a bog, but Siberian wetlands are not deep enough to bury an animal of that size. Furthermore, the majority of the sediment around the carcasses is not bog sediment.
The mammoth unearthed near the Berezovka River in Russia in 1900 was discovered in a sitting position despite slumping down the slope in a frozen block before discovery. The peculiar part of this mammoth suggests that the slide did not modify the mammoth’s initial position after death. The trees remained upright even among the material that fell down the hill.
Surprisingly, scientists discovered that three woolly mammoths and two woolly rhinos, including the Berezovsky mammoth, perished from suffocation. A living animal had to be buried quickly or drowned to die of asphyxia.
Several of the bodies had fractured bones. The upper front leg bones and some ribs of the Selerikan horse were both broken. It had also lost its head. The pelvis, ribs, and right foreleg of the Berezovsky mammoth were all fractured. It takes a lot of force to break a mammoth’s bones.
The fragmented bones prompted the legend that the Berezovsky mammoth was munching on grass and buttercups when it fell into a permafrost chasm. It was then quickly smothered and suffocated. Buttercups, leaves, and grasses were discovered in the Berezovsky mammoth’s mouth between its teeth and tongue.
It is difficult to explain the upright burial, but it is even more challenging to explain how so many mammoths and other animals ended up buried inside the permafrost layer. Both carcasses and bones had to be buried swiftly beneath the permafrost’s summer melt layer before decomposing.
Any viable explanation explaining why woolly mammoths lived in Siberia and how they perished must account for these corpse mysteries. But until then, it will remain an unsolved Ice Age enigma.
