| Jim: We've all been fascinated by stories of frozen mammoths that have been found in the cold regions of the north. The remains of these great creatures tell stories about the past. Does it fit with the Biblical account? Stay tuned! Dr. Vardiman: ...mammoths were probably post flood and killed during the Ice Age. Jim: This is Science, Scripture and Salvation: a Creation Radio Journal. I'm Jim Long of the Institute for Creation Research. Jim: Often scientists must try to reconstruct the past, based on the best data available. The same is true for creation scientists. As you'll see, that holds true for our today's topic. Stay tuned as we look at mammoths, and attempt to reconstruct their past. And based on the evidence, we'll see how mammoths relate to the Biblical account of Noah's Flood. But first, what exactly is a mammoth? According to Biologist, Dr Ken Cumming... Dr. Cumming: Although the woolly mammoth (which is the subject of our discussion today) is extinct—we don't have any living representatives of it. They probably represented one specialty of the elephant type that had an original species during creation. And that from that original species were diversifications and specializations that led to the African elephant, the Asian elephant, the Mastodon and the one (the woolly mammoth) that we're interested in here. Jim: Scientists base their knowledge of mammoths, on the evidence left behind... Dr. Cumming: In spite of the large number of bones that have been recovered, implying that there were a large population at one time of these woolly mammoths; only a very few, maybe a handful—five or less specimens—have actually been found that have been frozen and preserved in some of these northern soils. So the ones that we did obtain or that science has found and preserved gave lots of information about their skin and about the hair and about the digestive process and the like. Dr. Austin: I've been involved in excavation of mammoths and one of the most interesting of all the mammoths that I've studied is the Colorado Creek mammoths in central Alaska... Jim: ...Dr Steve Austin, Geologist with the Institute for Creation Research... Dr. Austin: Oh about 15 years ago a frozen mammoth was found buried in soil in central Alaska. The site in Alaska is a gold mine. The surface mining of gravel in central Alaska in the Colorado creek area near McGrath Alaska has exposed whole bunch of silt layers. And in there were found the remains—frozen—of two mammoths. Mostly bone, hair and skin material were found. Jim: The mammoths were actually found by a gold miner working there... Dr. Austin: The gold miner was actually using a big drag line and in the process, in the digging process, noticed the bank of the creek there were two tusks sticking out of the bank. And the miner had never seen anything like this. It was kind of an unusual kind of tree growing there. And as they kept on digging and looking at that they discovered that this is ivory sticking out of the bank. And then they found the ivory attached to the skull of a badly weathered, but frozen, mammoth. And that was later excavated in the early 1980's. Jim: Why is researching these mammoths so important to creation scientists? Dr. Austin: There are the layers of strata at the site where the mammoth is, that is of immense interest to me as a creationist because it helps me understand where the mammoth sits in relationship to Noah's flood. And the upper most strata, ten miles thickness, is this valley-filling silt layer that's frozen that has the mammoth and the caribou and the bison and the wolf and the other mammal remains. Jim: So how do we know where this mammoth sits in relationship to Noah's Flood? According to Dr Larry Vardiman, the creature has been found on top of strata that is thought to have been laid down by the flood... Dr. Vardiman: Many of them were still frozen or recently frozen when they were found. They were eroded from riverbanks in the alluvial plains. Which means that they were located in material or sediments that was above the residual effects of the Genesis flood. Jim: Although some believe the mammoths were killed during the flood, Dr Vardiman believes that their death came afterward... Dr. Vardiman: If the mammoths were killed during the flood they would not have been found on top of the flood sediments. If they were killed immediately after they got off the ark there wouldn't have been thousands of them. Jim: Mike Oard is a meteorologist with the National Weather service. According to Dr Vardiman, his work has helped creation scientists to better understand the post flood climate... Dr. Vardiman: He suggests that following the flood the Arctic ocean likely remained warm for several hundred years and this produced a moderate climate along the shores of the Arctic along the North American, the northern Europe and the Asian continents. Jim: And according to Dr Austin, this warm climate would be perfect for the mammoths... Dr. Austin: I think the mammoths are survivors of Noah's flood and they left the ark and found this habitat that was immediately an ideal place for them to live. They're woolly mammoths—they're big and they could survive in difficult weather conditions. But the Arctic prairie that was there in Alaska after the flood was just the ideal environment for them to flourish. And imagine all the succulent plants that were growing in that prairie environment. And so we had bison and woolly mammoths, twelve-foot tall woolly mammoths, sitting there. And we had wolf and we had caribou and sloths and saber-tooth tigers. You can imagine what this habitat was like. Jim: What evidence do we see suggesting warmer climate? Dr. Austin: Well, in digging in central Alaska I've seen the, I've dug the bones right out of the bank. And there's organic silt layers that show that there are lots plants growing there, different plants then today. Today we have spruce and tundra vegetations—small tundra plants—but this was more of an open forest and grass land environment that's what the fossil remains there in the soil layers in Alaska indicate to me. Jim: Dr. Cumming points out that the mammoths themselves give clues about the climate during that time... Dr. Cumming: The anatomy, physiology, the—even from the materials that were found in the digestive track—told us about what kinds of plants and animals were in their environment at the time that they were feeding on the grasslands. So frozen specimens were very valuable, never the less there are only a few, so our information is very limited as to what their environmental conditions were at the time that they were in these northern latitudes. Their distribution at that time was in Alaska, across the Bering Strait, over into Siberia and maybe even over into Europe. Quite a range of this particular kind of location. Typically, we might call it a unique kind of grassland, not like the grasslands we see today. Jim: The idea that a catastrophe like Noah's Flood could create such a suitable habitat is not too far-fetched. Often times a natural disaster will make such a new habitat. One example is Mount Saint Helens... Dr. Austin: At Mount Saint Helens we had a hundred and fifty square miles of habitat that was decimated by the volcanic eruption in May of 1980. And what it did was totally reconfigured the landscape and destroyed the plant life that was there. And so herbaceous plants started to grow back on that decimated terrain and immediately all kinds of animals invaded the area to take advantage of this new habitat. And elk and deer we thought were well adapted to forest dwelling—they preferred the blast zone at Mount Saint Helens because of the herbaceous plants that were more easily part of their diet. And so these animals invaded the blast zone. Jim: And how does this relate to the Flood? Dr. Austin: It seems like the Mount Saint Helens example is what it was like after the flood. Animals—giant mammoths (twelve foot tall), big saber-tooth tigers, wolves, caribou, bison—all these animals invaded the Arctic prairie habitat that formed there around the Arctic circle in the northern parts of Alaska and Siberia and Europe. And these animals actually thrived in that environment. Jim: As we've pointed out the warm oceans directly after the flood, provided a nice climate in the northern regions. However, these warm oceans may also have been what caused the eventual extinction of the mammoths. Dr. Austin: It was the warmth of the ocean left over from the flood had caused the warm habitat and ultimately that's what gave rise to Ice Age. The Ice Age is this time when the oceans cooled and the glaciers formed in the northern areas. And that's time that was difficult for mammoths, okay, and the other mammals that were living in that Arctic habitat. Dr. Vardiman: Then as the Ice Age developed in the following few hundred years after the flood, snow and ice accumulated (first in the central portion of the continents to the south). Which trapped the mammoths along the margin of the Arctic Ocean on the northern boundary of these continents. Jim: Dr. Vardiman, Atmospheric Physicist, who as been modeling the earth's climate during and after the Great Flood... Dr. Vardiman: When the Arctic Ocean finally froze, the climate probably changed very rapidly, freezing the mammoths as we find them today. And then they were covered over with snow and ice and preserved until they melted out and we found them. Jim: And the change in climate seemed to take place fast enough to freeze some of the mammoths solid. Even to the point of leaving undigested material in the mouth and stomach of the creature... Dr. Vardiman: Well, it turns out that there's really only one mammoth that appears to have those kind of conditions. Most of the mammoths are not preserved nearly that well. However there are many of them that do have, not quite fresh meat—but at least it's still eatable by sled dogs and so on. But most mammoths have been deteriorated to some degree. It's only one mammoth that seems to be the evidence of extremely rapid freezing. So it's probable that this one case was an unusual circumstance. There may have been a situation when the mammoth was caught in an extremely cold blizzard condition and froze very rapidly or maybe it fell into a circumstance where it was frozen rapidly. Most of the mammoths were not frozen that rapidly although it does indicated that they were frozen relatively rapidly—in a matter of days or weeks or months. Jim: Today, we have tried to recreate the past, based on the evidence that's available. Here's Dr Vardiman... Dr. Vardiman: So this seems to be an explanation of how you can have mammoths that came through the flood. They repopulated (the following several hundred years after the flood), were trapped in the northern portions of the continents, and then were frozen as the Arctic Ocean in turn cooled and finally froze. Jim: And as creationists, it's exciting to see that this theory fits nicely with the Biblical account. Dr. Austin agrees... Dr. Austin: The data on the mammoth-bearing silt layers in Alaska fit nicely with the idea of animals surviving after the flood. And it goes nicely with the post flood rapid Ice Age and various other features of the biblical record. Jim: As our program comes to a close, our hope is that you've been built up in your faith as you've heard about how science fits with the Bible. Today we've discussed mammoths, and how the Ice Age might have been the cause of their extinction. Science, Scripture and Salvation: a Creation Radio Journal is a production of ICR. For the Institute for Creation Research, I'm Jim Long, thanks for tuning in. | 
