THE MAMMOTH CONUNDRUM
Problems with the 90-degree Earth Flip Theory -- An Advanced Catastrophism Discussion
"In the northern countries, carcasses of large quadrupeds are frozen in the ice, and which have been preserved down to the present period with their skin, their hair and their flesh. If they had not been frozen as soon as killed, putrefaction would have decomposed them. And besides, this eternal frost did not previously exist in those parts [of the world] in which they were frozen, for they could not have existed in such a temperature. The same instant that these animals were bereft of life, the country which they inhabited became frozen. This event was sudden, momentary, without gradation..." Georges Cuvier, A Discourse on the Revolutions of the Surface of the Globe and the Changes Thereby Produced in the Animal Kingdom (1831), page 15. (<---free download links provided)
"Cuvier was the leading paleontologist and zoologist of his era..."
Ben Davidson of Suspicious0bservers is one of the most influential catastrophists in the world today. At the time of writing this article he has over 700,000 subscribers on his Youtube channel. I find his work to be of great importance to the survival of our species. I generally find his arguments compelling or at least worthy of consideration. He has done a tremendous amount of work regarding the role of the Sun in regulating the Earth's weather and climate. He also makes a convincing argument for the Sun's central role in a cyclical extinction-causing cataclysm.
One of his theories, however, does not seem supported by the data. Davidson claims that the Earth turns over 90-degrees approximately every 12,000 years. In this article, I will make the argument that the reports about frozen mammoth remains (and other flora and fauna) seem to indicate that the last pole flip was not a 90-degree flip and that Davidson's perception about how the Earth shifts appears to be incorrect. I have emailed him regarding my doubts about his flip theory on several occasions, and have not yet received a reply.
I am hoping to use this Substack platform to crowd-source collaborative research into this topic in the hope that we can all be better educated as we make critical life decisions.
Polar regions cover a large area and are basically uninhabitable for modern humans. Avoiding a polar zone (future or present) during the cataclysm is a top priority when selecting a safer location to weather out the disaster.
This article is an advanced catastrophist discussion; I presume that you are already aware that a pole shift is underway and preparations are urgent. (Preparation 1, Preparation 2)
The 90-degree Earth Flip Theory
Summary of Ben Davidson's Theory:
The Earth tilts 90-degrees.
Then it flips back 12,000 years later, repeating the cycle.
In the next event, Greenland will shift southward to the equator.
The side of Antarctica just south of Australia will shift North to the equator.
This would put the new geographic poles near India [North Pole] and near South America [South Pole].
The magnetic poles are moving toward each other, toward India.
If we presume that one magnetic pole will stay near India and the other will pop out on the other side of Earth when they meet, the poles will be in the above locations.
Source:
The Earth Will Turn Over | POLE SHIFT (7 min.)
(Posted: January 24, 2024)
Davidson explains the mechanism of his crustal displacement theory in this short video:
Earth Turns Over When The Crust Unlocks (7 min)
He further elaborates his theory in this video:
Magnetic Pole Shift | Q and A Nov.30.2022 (6 min.)
Davidson demonstrates how he thinks the Earth will flip in this video: HERE
He guesses that the Bermuda Triangle and the Dragon's Triangle were the pole locations prior to the last flip. (Source)
Some short Q and A responses where Davidson clarifies his idea:
Crustal Displacement & Disaster | Q and A Nov.9.2022 (4 min)
Planetary equilibrium and how the tilt will happen
Ben Davidson writes in his book, Earth Disaster Cycle: The Cycle Resets Soon (2023), page 48:
"The crust is currently locked to the mantle, but if it was ever unlocked, the polar ice would drive the crust to turn over 90 degrees, which would put the Arctic back in the tropics."
Page 59:
"We know exactly where the Earth will tilt, and where it will stop...The new polar regions will be near India and Brazil..."
Page 60:
"If you want to see for yourself, take a globe, have the Atlantic Ocean directly facing you, and then tilt the globe so that Greenland moves directly south to reach the equator. When Greenland is at the equator, stop tilting, and you can use that to see the new orientation of the Earth."
Ben Davidson believes that the locations of the Arctic Circle and Antarctica were at the equator prior to the Gothenberg excursion approximately 12,000 years ago. That would mean that Siberia, Greenland, Alaska and Northern Canada were near the equator and tropical at this time. Alaska and Siberia are the locations where the remains of frozen mammoths and other extinct megafauna have been found frozen under strange circumstances.
Davidson’s future pole location map:
Catastrophist Claims About the Mammoths
The mysterious conditions of the frozen dead mammoths have led to all kinds of speculations and contradictory assertions. Catastrophists frequently make statements that the mammoths found in Siberia and Alaska were living in a warm lush climate prior to their frozen entombment. Some examples:
Hugh Brown, Cataclysms of Earth, page 30:
"The food found in the mouths and stomachs of prehistoric monsters indicates that they had been grazing among abundant warm climate grasses when death suddenly overtook them...The presence of rhinoceroses... indicates that the climate had been tropical."
Universe Inside You - Cataclysmic Event Going To Destroy Earth - Pole Shift Hypothesis (first few minutes of video), it describes the food found in the mouth of a frozen Siberian mammoth as consisting of: "warm weather plants, the kind you find growing today in Mexico."
Ben Davidson, Earth Disaster Cycle: The Cycle Resets Soon (2023), page 74:
"While the mammoths were built for cold climates, the common story of them living near the Arctic circle makes absolutely no sense. These creatures would have needed to consume hundreds of pounds of vegetation daily, and these animals were alive during the last glacial period, which didn't end until after the last catastrophe 12,000 years ago.
That means that the polar region, and in fact many areas outside the poles, would not have had nearly enough vegetation to support the mammoths. They could not survive where they were found +12,000 years ago.
They were not living in the polar zone, they were living in middle latitudes, and those latitudes were thrust to the polar regions as the Earth tilted. There is no other explanation - the Earth turned over."
More recently (January 22, 2024) Davidson states that the mammoths:
Contrasting those three prior claims above with the words of Georges Cuvier, Essay on the Theory of the Earth, page 286, Cuvier wrote of a mammoth recovered from an ice-bank, near the mouth of a river in the north of Siberia:
"The skin was extremely thick and heavy, and as much of it remained as required the exertions of ten men to carry away, which they did with considerable difficulty. More than thirty pounds weight of the hair and bristles of this animal were gathered from the wet sandbank, having been trampled into the mud by the white bears, while devouring the carcass. Some of the hair was presented to our Museum of Natural History by M. Targe, censor in the Lyceum of Charlemagne. It consists of three distinct kinds. One of these is stiff black bristles, a foot or more in length; another is thinner bristles, or coarse flexible hair, of a reddish-brown color; and the third is a coarse reddish-brown wool, which grew among the roots of the long hair. These afford an undeniable proof that this animal had belonged to a race of elephants inhabiting a cold region, with which we are now unacquainted, and by no means fitted to dwell in the torrid zone [region of the Earth near the Equator]."
Getting more nuanced...
Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, pages 40-42:
"Northeast Siberia, which was not covered by ice in the Ice Age, conceals another enigma. The climate there has apparently changed drastically since the end of the Ice Age, and the yearly temperature has dropped many degrees below its previous level. Animals once lived in this region that do not live there now, and plants grew there that are unable to grow there now. The change must have occurred quite suddenly... The extinction of the mammoth is thought to have coincided with the end of the last glacial period... Further investigations showed that the leaves and twigs found in their stomachs do not now grow in the regions where the animals died, but far to the south, a thousand or more miles away. It is apparent that the climate has changed radically since the death of the mammoths; and as the bodies of the animals were found not decomposed but well preserved in blocks of ice, the change in temperature must have followed their death very closely or even caused it."
The first hand reports that I have seen do not suggest that the mammoths and the other animals found with them were living in a tropical climate just prior to the cataclysm that killed them. Nor do these reports suggest that the food found in their mouths and stomachs were of tropical or even sub-tropical origin.
Mammoth Extinction
According to the paper, The Role of Geomagnetic Field Intensity in Late Quaternary Evolution of Humans and Large Mammals:
"Prior to ~13 ka [13,000 years ago], the mammal assemblage of the Americas included large‐bodied animals such as mammoths, horses, camels, saber‐tooth cats, and the short‐faced bear. Extinction was total for mammals larger than 1,000 kg, >50% for size classes between 32 and 1,000 kg, and ~20% for those between 10 and 32 kg (Koch & Barnosky, 2006). Within a short time window, >150 species were lost in the Americas, including all mammals over ~600 kg." The extinction included the mammoths and "coincide[d] with a prominent decline in geomagnetic field intensity at ~13 ka [13,000 years ago]." Though some remnant of the "woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) persisted in interior Alaska until ~10.5 ka [10,500 years ago] (Haile et al., 2009), and the woolly mammoth survived on St. Paul Island (Alaska) until ~5.6 ka [5,600 years ago] (Graham et al., 2016), (Zazula et al. 2014)."
Without getting into controversies regarding scientific dating methodologies, the image of mammoths foraging in a tropical or sub-tropical climate prior to an abrupt polar shift is repeated by some catastrophists. This notion is rendered incorrect by archaeologist (and catastrophist) Frank Hibben in his paper Archaeological Aspects of the Alaska Muck Deposits:
"Animals at present identified from the Alaska muck include the mammoth, mastodon (although not nearly so common as the mammoth), horse, at least three species of bison, (Bison crassicornis, Bison occidentalis, and Bison alleni), two species of musk ox, saber toothed tiger, lion, camel, gazelle, antelope, an extinct bear, sheep, and a number of rodent forms. In addition to the above now extinct species, there also occur moose and caribou, similar to, if not identical with, living forms.
Not the least interesting aspect of the muck deposits is the vegetal material contained therein. It is remarkable to note that all plant species excepting two from the mucks are found in the region today among existing forms. The only common species which has not been identified in the living flora of Alaska is an indeterminate Silene. It has been widely believed that the late Pleistocene and Early Recent climate of Alaska was more moderate than at present and that this fact had much to do with the entrance of Early Man into the Behring [Bering] Strait region. This floral assemblage might be referred entirely to the Recent period were it not for the association of such undoubted Pleistocene forms as Felix atrox alaskensis [lion], Mammonteus primogenius [Mammuthus primigenius? -wooly mammoth], and Bison crassicornis [bison]. Sukachoff reports Betulo [Betula?], Carex, and Ranunculus in the stomach contents of a frozen mammoth from the Berezovka River [Russia] all of which genera are noted in the Alaska mucks. There is no floral nor, indeed, faunal evidence to indicate that the Alaskan climate of the Yukon region differed measurably in the Pleistocene from that of today.
With this climatic evidence, the deposition of the Alaska mucks may be presumed to have occurred under conditions similar to those of today. In spite of this fact, however, no such deposition may be demonstrated to be in progress at the present time nor, indeed, has the mode of deposition been adequately determined up to the present date.
In contrast to certain of the Siberian occurrences, the Alaska mucks contain faunal remains that are almost invariably disarticulated in spite of the fact that not uncommonly ligaments, cartilage, and portions of flesh and skin yet adhere to the bones. Cross sections of the muck in those places where these can be observed by the cutting action of the hydraulic giants [high pressure water hoses used in mining] show an abundance of vegetal material, much of which is in the form of large trees. Some of the latter are in an upright position with stumps in place, apparently growing on their original ground level. By far, the majority of the tree and larger wood remains lie in twisted piles in accumulations suggesting their deposition in ephemeral arroyo or small canyon cuts. The torn and lacerated limbs and trunks of these trees give every indication of violent but not lengthy transportation to their present situation. Intermittently, however, with these violent erosional evidences, are lenses of peat apparently representing a static ground level at that particular stratum for at least several years. The total of these evidences indicates the alternate and intermittent periods of violent erosion such as would dismember animal remains and splinter trees, interspersed with other periods of comparative quiescence so as to allow the growth of 'forests' and peat bogs in the same area."
Pause for a moment and take that in. He is describing alternating layers of plants and animals of a similar climate to that of today, periodically deposited, but allowing sufficient time for peat bogs and trees to grow between depositions.
Additionally, Frank Hibben reports on the stomach contents of the Alaskan mammoths in his book The Lost Americans, page 180:
"In the Alaskan mucks, on several occasions, stomachs of frozen mammoth have come to light. These stomachs have been preserved by the same flux of freezing and eternal refrigeration that has saved skin, tendons, and even flesh, here and there, in these fascinating deposits. These stomach masses, eternally frozen, since the original unfortunate animal ate his last meal and passed away in those regions, yet contain leaves and grass that the animal consumed. These remains, even though partly digested so many thousands of years ago, show the kinds of bushes and trees that the mammoth ate in his prime. Surprisingly enough, the remains show the leaves of alder, birch, and willow, exactly the same trees that grow in Alaska today. The climate, then, certainly differed little, if any, from the climate of the present time."
The Lost Americans, page 184:
"We have already seen that the muck pits of Alaska are filled with evidences of universal death. Mingled in these frozen masses are the remains of many thousands of animals killed in their prime. The best evidence that we could have that this Pleistocene death was not simply a case of the bison and the mammoth dying after their normal span of years is found in the Alaskan muck. In this dark gray frozen stuff is preserved, quite commonly, fragments of ligaments, skin, hair, and even flesh. We have gained from the muck pits of the Yukon Valley a picture of quick extinction. The evidences of violence there are as obvious as in the horror camps of Germany. Such piles of bodies of animals or men simply do not occur by any ordinary natural means.
Neither the Pleistocene animals nor their untimely end are phenomena peculiar to the American continents."
The Lost Americans, page 190-192:
"One of the most interesting of the theories of the Pleistocene end is that which explains this ancient tragedy by world-wide, earth-shaking volcanic eruptions of catastrophic violence. This bizarre idea, queerly enough, has considerable support, especially in the Alaskan and Siberian regions. Interspersed in the muck depths and sometimes through the very piles of bones and tusks themselves are layers of volcanic ash. There is no doubt that coincidental with the end of the Pleistocene animals, at least in Alaska, there were volcanic eruptions of tremendous proportions. It stands to reason that animals whose flesh is still preserved must have been killed and buried quickly to be preserved at all. Bodies that die and lie on the surface soon disintegrate and the bones are scattered. A volcanic eruption would explain the end of the Alaskan animals all at one time, and in a manner that would satisfy the evidences there as we know them. The herds would be killed in their tracks either by the blanket of volcanic ash covering them and causing death by heat or suffocation or, indirectly by the volcanic gases. Toxic clouds of gas from volcanic upheavals could well cause death on a gigantic scale...
Throughout the Alaskan mucks, too, there is evidence of atmospheric disturbances of unparalleled violence. Mammoth and bison alike were torn and twisted as though by a cosmic hand in godly rage. In one place, we can find the foreleg and shoulder of a mammoth with portions of the flesh and the toenails and the hair still clinging to the blackened bones [burnt]. Close by is the neck and skull of a bison with the vertebrae clinging together with tendons and ligaments and the chitinous covering of the horns intact. There is no mark of a knife or cutting implement. The animals were simply torn apart and scattered over the landscape like things of straw and string, even though some of them weighed several tons. Mixed with the piles of bones are trees, also twisted and torn and piled in tangled groups; and the whole is covered with the fine sifting muck, then frozen solid.
Storms, too, accompany volcanic disturbances of the proportions indicated here. Differences in temperature and the influence of the cubic miles of ash and pumice thrown into the air by eruptions of this sort might well produce winds and blasts of inconceivable violence. If this is the explanation for the end of all this animal life, the Pleistocene period was terminated by a very exciting time, indeed."
The paper, Impact-related microspherules in Late Pleistocene Alaskan and Yukon “muck” deposits signify recurrent episodes of catastrophic emplacement, confirms Hibben's report:
"The [muck deposit] contains abundant layers, lenses, and clumps of plant material derived from grasses, mosses, alder, spruce, willow, cottonwood, and birch that match the present-day flora... and in many places contain tree stumps rooted in place with the trunks and treetops having been 'broken off and carried away.' "
The researchers comment on their review of muck deposit reports:
"The remarkable preservation of vertebrate and plant remains within the mucks, however, is in stark contrast to the physical disruption and damage affecting much of this material. Much of the skeletal remains from Alaska and Yukon were disarticulated and broken prior to freezing... and the rare preserved carcasses were often mangled and torn apart. Such dismemberment has been attributed to predators and scavengers, but these explanations raise questions including why the carcasses’ remaining fat and flesh had not been consumed...
'The dispersal of the bones is as striking as their abundance' and articulated bones are scarce in Beringia with the exception of small rodent carcasses (e.g., ground squirrels, pikas, mice) found underground within their nests and burrows. Moreover, not only are individual megafaunal bones found separately, or mixed together in concentrated “bone beds”, they also are often broken... In examining large collections of Pleistocene fossil bones at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a Yukon Government warehouse in Whitehorse, we noted that the majority had been broken, including the largest (femora and humeri), with some still containing relict marrow, supporting the lack of predation. Because the mucks have apparently remained frozen since [the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted], dispersal and breakage of bones must have occurred prior to freezing and was not a general byproduct of the mining operations."
"Otto W. Geist undertook extensive fossil collecting in Alaska on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and in a typical year (1938) shipped more than eight thousand select specimens, weighing nearly eight tons (~7257 kg), to New York City.
The fossil bones collected included those of bison, mammoth, horse, musk ox, moose, lynx, lion, camel, mastodon, bear, and caribou, with many of these animals also appearing as frozen partial carcasses or mummies. The three most common genera found were bison, mammoth, and horse, which represent more than 90% of Beringia’s large mammalian biomass. Many tens of thousands of specimens were collected in the 20th century from Alaska and the Yukon Territory and hundreds to thousands more are still being recovered every year from mines in the Klondike district alone...
Otto Geist held a... catastrophic view, based on his observations as collector, and envisioned a rapid series of events beginning with large volcanic eruptions and dust storms depositing widespread ash and silt beds that starved the animal grazers, followed by 'great winds' that stripped trees of their leaves and bark before knocking them down, and finally by floodwaters that dismembered the many carcasses while washing them along with silt and plant debris into the creek valleys."
The descriptions of these reports does suggest a catastrophic natural disaster. It also indicates a repeating event when Frank Hibbon states: "The total of these evidences indicates the alternate and intermittent periods of violent erosion such as would dismember animal remains and splinter trees, interspersed with other periods of comparative quiescence so as to allow the growth of 'forests' and peat bogs in the same area."
If these mammoths were near the equator (as would be required for the 90-degree theory to be correct) why were they found frozen with plant life that grows in the current climate of Alaska?
Possibly the global tropical zone was reduced during the time of the mammoths as they are said to have lived in the pre-Holocene Ice Age with allegedly colder temperatures than we have now. With a cooler global temperature, the band of the temperate climate could be closer to the equator. The current climate zones would be different than now and Alaskan plants may have had a more southern range than they do currently. Even so, the 90-degree flip that Davidson claims would put Alaska right on the equator and the plant profile should not resemble the current Alaskan climate.
An idea that crossed my mind is that the last pole flip was not a 90-degree flip but a 30-degree flip. Allow me to flesh out this idea a bit more...
The Laurentide Ice Sheet
In this interview with Randall Carlson, the host Matthew LaCroix, asks an interesting question about the Laurentide Ice Sheet:
Time stamp: 1:12:26
Matthew: Is it that Alaska and Siberia was largely ice free because the North Pole was in a different place?
Randall: Well, interestingly if you were to shift the North Pole to the center of Hudson Bay and draw a line around it that marked the equivalent of our modern Arctic Circle it would almost perfectly encompass the Laurentide Ice Sheet.
Matthew: So it proves that the North Pole was in a different position during that event.
Randall: It doesn't prove it, but it it suggests it.
Additional support for this idea can be found in this article: Isostatic Rebound - Rising Land
The article states: "The land was pushed down the most around Hudson Bay, where the ice sheet was thickest, and the weight of ice was greatest."
It would seem that the area of greatest isostatic depression would correlate to the center (thickest) part of the ice sheet. In this case, the Hudson Bay.
Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, page 285, describing the boundaries of the Laurentide Ice Sheet:
"If we look at the distribution of the ice sheet in the Northern Hemisphere, we see that a circle, with its center somewhere near the east shore of Greenland or in the strait between Greenland and Baffin [Island, Canada] near the present north magnetic pole [at that time], and a radius of about 3,600 kilometers, embraces the region of the ice sheet of the last glacial age. Northeastern Siberia is outside the circle; the valley of the Missouri down to 39° north latitude is within the circle. The eastern part of Alaska is included, but not its western part. Northwestern Europe is well within the circle; some distance behind the Ural Mountains, the line curves toward the north and crosses the present polar circle.
Now we reflect: Was not the North Pole at some time in the past 20° or more distant from the point it now occupies – and closer to America? In like manner, the old South Pole would have been roughly the same 20° from the present pole... It is probable that twenty-seven centuries ago, or perhaps thirty-five [?], the present North Pole was at Baffin [Island] or close to the Boothia Felix Peninsula of the American mainland."
Velikovsky was pretty close. Another 10° South would have put him at the Hudson Bay.
Notice that the mammoth range was outside of the Hudson Bay area and the Laurentide Ice Sheet.
Bison zone excluded by ice?
No lion bones found near Hudson Bay.
On the inside cover of the book The Path of the Pole by Charles H. Hapgood, the author shows what he believes was the previous North Pole position: the Hudson Bay of Canada. He claims that the North Pole moved from there to it's current position between 17,000 - 12,000 years ago.
In Cataclysms of the Earth by Hugh Brown, page 57, he offers:
"There is much geological evidence to show that the last Ice Age of the North American continent was caused by a great ice cap centered in Canada that extended southward to present-day New York City. Moraines, eskers, clay beds, and other residual evidence of the glacier exist in many places, including northern New Jersey and southern New York.
A shallow dent in the earth, averaging 420 feet below sea level, now known as Hudson Bay, marks the ice cap’s approximate center, while the heights of land known as the Laurentian Shield and which almost surround Hudson Bay, mark the final edges or lips of the main ice bowl.
The watershed of the Hudson Bay Basin corresponds to the kind of scar or dent in the surface of the earth which an ice cap could make, and which it would leave behind as evidence of its existence."
On page 58, he continues:
"The outstanding fact is that the ice radiated from a center in the area now known as the Hudson Bay Basin. It did not spread southward from the present North Pole area. The ice flowed away from a central point; this shows clearly that the Hudson Bay Basin was then at the North Pole of the Axis of Spin, and that the ice flowed in every direction from the pole."
Late Summer Slaughter in a Cold Temperate Land
"Admiral Wrangel, whose Arctic explorations have been so valuable to science, tells us that the remains of these animals are heaped up in such quantities in certain parts of Siberia that he and his men climbed over ridges and mounds consisting entirely of the bones of Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc. From these facts it would seem that they roamed over all these northern regions in troops as large and numerous as the Buffalo herds that wander over our Western [North American] prairies now."
Louis Agassiz, Geological Sketches, 1873, page 221
The field reports of actual first hand accounts make it clear that the mammoths were in a temperate climate, much like the Great Plains of North America today, at the time of the cataclysm. Further, the evidence suggest that the season of death was during the late Summer or Autumn.
The map above shows 58 excavations of frozen mammoths, several rhinoceroses, a horse, a young musk ox, a wolverine, voles, squirrels, a bison, a rabbit, and a lynx. It is a little difficult to see but if you zoom in, each dot is numbered. For details on the excavations, the number of each dot corresponds to the notes on this table. For more information on the Alaskan finds, see page 58 of: Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe by Russell Dale Guthrie
From the 1600's to present there are records of finding frozen mammoths in Alaska and Siberia.
Walt Brown, Frozen Mammoths:
"Since 1800, at least 11 scientific expeditions have excavated fleshy remains of extinct mammoths. Most fleshy remains were buried in the permafrost of northern Siberia, inside the Arctic Circle. The remains of six mammoths have been found in Alaska. Only a few complete carcasses have been discovered. Usually, wild animals had eaten the exposed parts before scientists arrived...
The northern portions of Europe, Asia, and North America contain bones of many other animals along with those of mammoths. A partial listing includes tiger, antelope, camel, horse, reindeer, giant beaver, fox, giant bison, giant ox, musk sheep, musk ox, donkey, badger, ibex, woolly rhinoceros, lynx, leopard, wolverine, arctic hare, lion, elk, giant wolf, ground squirrel, cave hyena, bear, and many types of birds. Friend and foe, as well as young and old, are found together. Carnivores are sometimes buried with herbivores. Were their deaths related? Rarely are animal bones preserved; preservation of so many different types of animal bones suggests a common explanation."
In Cataclysms of the Earth by Hugh Brown, page 30:
"The stomach contents of the Bereskovka mammoth consisted chiefly of field grasses, which were identified, analyzed, and photographed. The names of the grasses are given in Russian and Latin in an article by G. N. Kutomanov in the Bulletin of The Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, 1914, Vol. 8, No. 6, pages 377-88. The grasses are similarly reported in a detailed description of the extrication of the beast in the annual report of The Academy of Sciences, 1914, Tome 13...
Nine genera of grasses were found and help us to establish the climatic conditions under which the animal lived. If the grasses were arctic grasses, the mammoth must have lived in an arctic climate. If the grasses were tropical, a tropical climate would be indicated. This problem was submitted to the Smithsonian Institute. Mr. C. V. Morton, Curator, Division of Ferns, Department of Botany, advises that all of the grasses are now found in temperate climates, none in tropical climates, and four out of the nine are found as far north as the Arctic Circle...
I. P. Tolmachoff states concerning the Bereskovka mammoth: 'The pelvis, a right foreleg and a few ribs were found broken, as well as indications of a strong hemorrhage and also suffocation in mud. The death by suffocation is proved by the erection of the male genital, a condition inexplicable in any other way.' (American Philosophical Society Transactions, N.S. 23, 1929)."
Hapgood provides a list of the plant species found in the stomach of the Bereskovka mammoth.
Charles H. Hapgood, The Path of the Pole, pages 297-300:
Alopecurus alpinus, Beckmannia eruciformis, Agropyron cristatum, Hordeum violaceum Boiss. et Huet, Carex lagopina, Ranunculus acris, and Oxytropis sordida.
Some plants were identified down to the genus but not the species: Agrostis and Gramina.
“In addition to the nine species mentioned above, and described in the report, with numerous measurements, the author reports that two kinds of mosses were identified in the stomach contents by Professor Broterus, of Finland. There were five sprigs of Hypnum fluitans (Dill.) L. and one sprig of Aulacomnium turgidum…
The report states, further, that another scientist, F. F. Herz, brought back several fragments of woody substances and bark from beneath the mammoth, and of the species of vegetation among which it was lying. Very surprisingly, these were found to differ in a marked degree from the contents of the stomach. A larch (Larix sp.) was finally identified, but the genus only, not the species.
Another tree identified in a general way was Betula Alba L.s.I., but the exact species could not be determined. The same was true of a third tree, Alnus sp. ‘All three of these kinds grow at present in the Kolyma River basin, and along the Beresovka, as they are widespread in general from the northern limits of the wooded belt to the southern plains…’
‘The finding of the wood remains under the mammoth, and even the cliff itself where the mammoth was lying, suggest that he was not feeding in the place where he died. The majority of the vegetation in his food did not grow along cliffs or in conjunction with species of trees…’
The discovery of the ripe fruits of sedges, grasses, and other plants suggests that ‘the mammoth died during the second half of July or the beginning of August.’”
Only temperate species were found. No tropical species.
Charles H. Hapgood, The Path of the Pole, page 297:
“The academicians, [in the] meantime, made careful observations of its [the Beresovka mammoth's] original position. They saw evidence that, in their opinion, the mammoth had been mired in the mud. It looked as if its last struggles had been to get out of the mud, and as if it had frozen to death in a half-standing position.”
Walt Brown, Frozen Mammoths, describing the stomach contents of a different mammoth, the Benkendorf mammoth:
"They removed the tusks and opened its full stomach containing 'young shoots of the fir and pine; and a quantity of young fir cones, also in a chewed state ...' "
Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe by Russell Dale Guthrie, page 27, describing the stomach contents of a dead young complete Russian mammoth named Dima, states:
"The botanist identifying seeds from the gastrointestinal tract found them to be late summer to early winter in their degree of maturity; however, the team’s palynologist found many pollen grains in the gastrointestinal tract that had not yet reached maturity."
Pollen in these grasslands was most likely the most abundant from spring to fall.
Page 45:
"In 1971 another frozen mammoth was found on the Shandrin River... one small sample of pollen was studied, and in that sample, grass (Poacea) was the most common, followed by sedge (Cyperaceae) and significant amounts of wormwood or sage (Artemisia) and larch (Larix). Other genera were found less often. Some woody plants were identified to species, such as cranberry (Vaccinium vitis-ideae) and larch (Larix dahurica), others only to genera, like willow (Salix). Woody plants, however, accounted for a small part of the gastrointestinal tract pollen and total biomass... Gorlova found ripe fruits and seeds and examined the annual rings on the twigs of larch, dwarf birch, and willow, concluding that the mammoth died in the second half of summer."
All species and one genera (see the links) are found in cold temperate climates. Without the full Latin name for the plant the distribution and climatic habitat often cannot be known as each genus usually has a wide range of species that grow in a range of climates.
Page 49, describing a mummified Pleistocene pony, named the Selerikan Pony, the:
"fat deposits surrounding the heart and other viscera suggest it did not die in late winter, early spring, or even early summer... Pollen from the gastrointestinal tract was studied by N. G. Solonevich, B. A. Tikhomirov, and V. V. Ukraintseva (1977) and identified as mature, suggesting a late summer death. This interpretation was supported by T. V. Yegorova (1977), who identified mature seeds in the gastrointestinal tract. Pelage length is characteristic of a full winter coat. These facts point to late autumn as the time of death. Vereshchagin (1977) notes that winter hair is lost quite late in many northern species, but I doubt winter hair would have persisted until late summer. Also, equids have both a winter pelt and a summer one, unlike extant northern ungulates.
Moose (Alces), caribou (Rangifer), mountain sheep (Ovis), and musk-oxen (Ovibos) shed their coats only once a year, usually in late spring. They use the early, short growth as a summer coat; thus one pelage suffices for the entire year...
N. G. Solonevich and V. V. Vikhireva-Vasil’kova (1977) found more than 90% of herbaceous material [in the pony’s stomach], virtually all of which was festucoid grasses, mainly Festuca. They also found a few sedge parts, some dicot herb leaves, and some woody plants, but they concluded: 'Woody plants constitute an insignificant percentage of the total biomass' (p. 205). Both birch (Betula), and willow (Salix), were found. There were traces of moss, mainly Polytrichum. Ukraintseva’s (1981) pollen studies from this same material showed a similar pattern. It was almost totally graminoids, with grasses outnumbering sedges 2 to 1. There were a small number of pollen grains of spruce, pine, and alder, all species presently found 1,000 km south of where the Selerikan pony was found. It was unclear to me whether these could be long-distance contaminants. Seeds found in the gut and identified by V. I. Yegorova (1977), however, were quite different than the stems and leaves. These seeds were mainly of Kobresia and Carex, both sedges. She identified seeds from Kobresia capilliformis, which today does not live in the Arctic but is a characteristic meadow grass of highlands in central Asia and Mongolia.
Interestingly, John Matthews identified a species of Kobresia seeds in the pelt of the Colorado Creek mammoth, found near McGrath, Alaska. This rather xeric [arid] sedge also grows in Mongolia."
All species and genera listed that had a clearly defined habitat zone from the quotations cited are found in cold temperate climates. No tropical or sub-tropical species were found.
"...from their thick fat deposits and recovered gut contents, it appears that many of the animals died at roughly the same times of year during the late summer or autumn seasons."
Footnotes from Walt Brown´s Frozen Mammoths, further suggest late summer or autumn as the time of the cataclysm:
"114. 'Seeds and grasses from the intestines indicate that the mammoth died in autumn.' Stewart, 'Frozen Mammoths from Siberia,' p. 68.
115. 'It is the grass seeds (the species as yet unidentified) which testify to Dima's death in summer, perhaps even specifically in the month of August.' John Massey Stewart, 'A Baby That Died 40,000 Years Ago Reveals a Story,' Smithsonian, 1978, p. 126.
If the former pole location was Hudson Bay, Canada, than it would make sense that the plant profile found with the Alaskan mammoths would be more boreal than in Siberia as it is closer to Hudson Bay. Siberia would be expected to have a more mild temperate climate. The topography of Siberia is mostly flat and low elevation with the exception of the Central Siberian Plateau, and the East Siberian Mountains. The Central Siberian Plateau is a vast, elevated region that covers much of central Siberia. It is characterized by a relatively flat to gently sloping terrain, with elevations ranging from 300 to 1,500 meters (1,000 to 4,900 feet) above sea level. Siberia as a warmer climate would have been predominantly a massive grassland habitat that far exceeds the Great Plains of the Americas or Africa. (Source 1, Source 2)
Ocean Displacement
"The sudden extermination of mammoths was caused by a catastrophe and probably resulted from asphyxiation or electrocution. The immediately subsequent movement of the Siberian continent into the polar region is probably responsible for the preservation of the corpses... In a few hours northeastern America moved from the frigid zone of the polar circle into a moderate zone; northeastern Siberia moved in the opposite direction from the moderate zone to the polar circle. The present cold climate of northern Siberia started when the glacial age in Europe and America came to a sudden end."
Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, page 285
William Basset Walker, Cyclical Deluges, on pages 82-83, about Siberian mammoths, he writes:
"Allusion has been made to the extinct elephants, referred to by Sir Boderick Murchison in his Address to the Royal Geographical Society for 1866, 'the heads of which,' he says, 'were, for the most part, turned towards the South; as if the animals had been retreating southward, when caught, either by an inundation proceeding from the North Polar regions... whereby their former pasture grounds became converted into the frozen soil in which the mammoths have been preserved to this day. All Northern Siberia, which is now glacial, was, during the age in which the mammoths lived, covered with a vegetation adequate to support vast hordes of these animals even up to the seventy-fifth degree of north latitude.
It may be inferred that the chief masses of such marine drift were deposited while a prodigious change of climate was being effected over the northern hemisphere. When the great, and, possibly, sudden, change of climate occurred, by which the mammoths were destroyed and entombed in situ, Northern Siberia was largely inhabited by these animals.'"
If the mammoths were found running southward in Siberia, this could suggest that they were trying to escape from a tsunami coming from the north, coming from the Arctic ocean.
If the pole flipped as Hapgood, Brown, and Velikovsky describe, then it would make sense that the Arctic Ocean would surge over Siberia, sending the mammoths there running southward. Then probably the back slosh would have pummeled the mammoths in Alaska on the return.
This passage suggests a hail storm, Walt Brown, Frozen Mammoths:
"In Siberia and Alaska, scientists have found a strange type of ice in and under the muck containing mammoth remains. Tolmachoff called it rock ice... It looked 'like compacted hail.' Mammoth remains have been found above, below, beside, partially in, and, in one case, within rock ice."
For a fascinating report on rock ice and subterranean ice layers see this part of: Frozen Mammoths
Walt Brown, Frozen Mammoths:
"Some have called it fossil ice. Pfizenmayer, who was on the Berezovka expedition, called it diluvial ice. The term “diluvial” refers to the biblical flood (deluge). A common belief among Siberians was that the frozen mammoths were killed and buried during the biblical flood, after which Siberian weather became much colder. So, the term “diluvial” is often associated with buried animals and ice in Siberia. Even today, geologists use the word “diluvium” to refer to glacial deposits, believed in the 1800s to be laid down during Noah’s flood."
The mammoths attempt to get to high ground to escape the flood waters...
Walt Brown, Frozen Mammoths:
"Mammoth and rhinoceros bodies are often found on the highest levels of generally flat, low plateaus (Tolmachoff, p. 51. 'Experience has also shown that more [and better mammoth bones] are found in elevations situated near higher hills than along the low coast or on the flat tundra.' -- Ferdinand von Wrangell, Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea, in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822, & 1823, 2nd edition, London: James Madden and Co., 1884, p. 275.)... Soft parts of large animals have been preserved over a 3,000-mile-wide zone involving three continents (Asia, Europe, and North America). It is unlikely that so many unrelated local events would produce such similar results over such a broad geographical area... Mammoth carcasses are almost exclusively encased in frozen muck. Also buried in muck are huge deposits of trees and other animal and vegetable matter... At least three mammoths and two rhinoceroses suffocated."
Charles H. Hapgood, The Path of the Pole, page 294:
“Howorth remarked on this same problem:
While it is on the one hand clear that the ground in which the bodies are found has been hard frozen since the carcasses were entombed, it is no less inevitable that when these same carcasses were originally entombed, the ground must have been soft and unfrozen. You cannot thrust flesh into hard frozen earth without destroying it.” [Howorth, H. H., The Mammoth and the Flood, Geological Magazine, New Series, 8:309-15 (1881). Page 313.]
Walt Brown, Frozen Mammoths:
"Dense concentrations of mammoth bones, tusks, and teeth are also found on remote Arctic islands... Many have described these mammoth remains as the main substance of the islands. What could account for any concentration of bones and ivory on barren islands well inside the Arctic Circle? Also, more than 200 mammoth molars were dredged up along with oysters from the Dogger Bank in the North Sea."
Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval, page 19:
"Mammoth tusks have been dredged in nets from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean; and after arctic gales the shores of the islands are strewn with tusks cast up by the billows."
Charles Hapgood, Great Mysteries of The Earth, page 59:
"Certain islands in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Siberia seem to be composed almost entirely of bones. Bones are believed to be scattered in great numbers over the bottom of the Arctic Ocean; ships dredge them up, and storms throw them onto the Arctic beaches."
Charles H. Hapgood, The Path of the Pole, page 288:
“Saks, Belov, and Lapina point to evidence that there were luxuriant forests growing on the New Siberian Islands [off the north Artic coast of Russia] in Miocene and perhaps Pliocene times (364). At the beginning of the Pleistocene the islands were connected with the mainland, and the mammoths ranged over them. In the opinion of these writers the vast numbers of mammoth remains on Great Lyakhov Island indicate that they took refuge on the island when the land was sinking [or perhaps flooding] (364:4, note). There is no evidence that they were washed across the intervening sea.”
Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval, page 21:
"In 1829 the German scientist G. A. Erman went to the Liakhov and the New Siberian islands to measure there the magnetic field of the earth. He described the soil as full of the bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffaloes. Of the piles of wood he wrote: 'In New Siberia [Island], on the declivities facing the south, lie hills 250 or 300 feet high, formed of driftwood, the ancient origin of which, as well as of the fossil wood in the tundras, anterior to the history of the Earth in its present state, strikes at once even the most un-educated hunters... Other hills on the same island, and on Kotelnoi, which lies further to the west, are heaped up to an equal height with skeletons of pachyderms [elephants, rhinoceroses], bisons, etc., which are cemented together by frozen sand as well as by strata and veins of ice... On the summit of the hills they [the trunks of trees] lie flung upon one another in the wildest disorder, forced upright in spite of gravitation, and with their tops broken off or crushed, as if they had been thrown with great violence from the south on a bank, and there heaped up.' "
(Quoted from: Travels in Siberia: including excursions northwards Down the Obi, to the Polar Circle and southwards to the Chinese Frontier, 1848, page 393)
If a displaced ocean swept across Siberia and then receded into the Arctic Ocean, it would seem that many of the animal bodies would have been drawn into the sea. The concentration of mammoth discoveries along the Arctic coastline probably has to do with: 1) Where the bodies are most likely to be deposited after receding floodwaters, 2) The locations where humans in that region are most likely to travel (river ways and ocean), and 3) The colder frozen zone is further north providing greater protection from thaw that would make remains susceptible to scavengers and decomposition.
Walt Brown, Frozen Mammoths:
"Muck is a major geological mystery. It covers one-seventh of the earth’s land surface—all surrounding the Arctic Ocean. Muck occupies treeless, generally flat terrain, with no surrounding mountains from which the muck could have eroded. Russian geologists have drilled through 4,000 feet of this muck without hitting solid rock. Where did so much eroded material come from?"
Impact-related microspherules in Late Pleistocene Alaskan and Yukon “muck” deposits signify recurrent episodes of catastrophic emplacement, offers a clue as to the role of a massive tsunami in establishing the muck deposits:
"A distinctive characteristic of the Beringian mucks is their uniform fine-grain size with only a few thin layers and lenses of coarser sand and gravel near their lower contacts... the layers are conformable to the valley slopes and bottoms."
Frank Hibben, The Lost Americans, pages 104-106:
“In many places the Alaskan muck blanket is packed with animal bones and debris in trainload lots. Bones of mammoth, mastodon, several kinds of bison, horses, wolves, bears, and lions tell a story of a faunal population...
The Alaskan muck is like a fine, dark gray sand... Within this mass, frozen solid, lie the twisted parts of animals and trees intermingled with lenses of ice and layers of peat and mosses. It looks as though in the middle of some cataclysmic catastrophe of ten thousand years ago the whole Alaskan world of living animals and plants was suddenly frozen in mid-motion in a grim charade...
Throughout the Yukon and its tributaries, the gnawing currents of the river had eaten into many a frozen bank of muck to reveal bones and tusks of these animals protruding at all levels. Whole gravel bars in the muddy river were formed of the jumbled fragments of animal remains.”
In this tsunami video by Ben Davidson, the initial wave and back slosh differ, showing the variation in wave dynamics: The Great Tsunamis When The Earth Turns Over (2 min.).
"Stacked layers of killed forests indicate that creek-valley silt accumulation was not gradual or uniform, but that it was deposited cyclically in large amounts over short intervals of time."
Possibly the deposition pattern of this event results from the ocean sloshing back and forth several times as the sea is resettling into it's ocean bed. Perhaps each pass of the mega-tsunami headed toward Siberia then returning back to Canada, altered the deposition layer during the same event.
Georges Cuvier, Essay on the Theory of the Earth, page 279:
"Pallas says, that from the Don or the Tanais [Russian river] to Tchutskoinoss, there is scarcely a river the bank of which does not afford remains of the mammoth; and these are frequently imbedded in, or covered with, alluvial soil, containing marine productions." [The term "alluvial" originates from the Latin word "alluvius," meaning "flood" or "stream," and is derived from the verb "alluere," which means "to wash over."]
Marine productions from the sea, as would be expected in an ocean displacement, suggests that tsunamis invaded the land, thereby mixing together remains of sea life and large terrestrial animals.
Ignatius Donnelly, Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, page 64:
"Mr. Geikie says:
Below a deposit of till, at Woodhill Quarry, near Kilmaurs, in Ayrshire (Scotland), the remains of mammoths and reindeer and certain marine shells have several times been detected during the quarrying operations... Two elephant-tusks were got at a depth of seventeen and a half feet from the surface... The mammalian remains, obtained from this quarry, occurred in a peaty layer between two thin beds of sand and gravel which lay beneath a mass of ' till,' and rested directly on the sandstone rock." (The Great Ice Age, p. 149)
Adding to the complex hydrological scene, Ben Davidson offers more considerations: a cosmic water explosion, the waters below surfacing, star water, and plasma freezing (though Charles Hapgood offers a less fantastical and in my mind more likely explanation for the rapid freezing on pages 292-296 of The Path of the Pole.) A cataclysm would hit us from all angles.
Frank Hibben, The Lost Americans, pages 182-184:
“The Pleistocene period ended in death. This was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period which fizzled to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all inclusive... The large animals that had given the name to the period became extinct. Their death marked the end of the era.
But how did they die? What caused the extinction of forty million animals? This mystery forms one of the oldest detective stories in the world. A good detective story involves humans and death. Those conditions are met at the end of the Pleistocene. In this particular case, the death was of such colossal proportions as to be staggering to contemplate...
The "corpus delicti" of the deceased in this mystery may be found almost anywhere... the animals of the period wandered into every corner of the New World not actually covered by the ice sheets. Their bones lie bleaching in the sands of Florida and in the gravels of New Jersey. They weather out of the dry terraces of Texas and protrude from the sticky ooze of the tar pits of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Thousands of these remains have been encountered in Mexico and even in South America. The bodies lie as articulated skeletons revealed by dust storms, or as isolated bones and fragments in ditches or canals. The bodies of the victims are everywhere in evidence.
It might at first appear that many of these great animals died natural deaths; that is, that the remains that we find in the Pleistocene strata over the continent represent the normal death that ends the ordinary life cycle. However, where we can study these animals in some detail, such as in the great bone deposits of Nebraska, we find literally thousands of these remains together. The young lie with the old, foal with dam and calf with cow. Whole herds of animals were apparently killed together, overcome by some common power.”
Conclusions
My main focus with this article has been to demonstrate that the climate information yielded from the frozen megafauna that died during the Gotherberg geomagnetic excursion event demonstrates that the 90-degree Earth flip theory is doubtful. If Earth’s poles shift 90-degrees to the equator, and then shift back to their original position (as Ben Davidson says), then Siberia and Alaska would have been tropical (at most elevations) with possibly some sub-tropical areas, before the last cataclysm. None of the reports I have seen suggest this to be true. It seems to me that upon honest examination of the evidence, we can consider the 90-degree flip theory invalid. This is not to say that the Earth never has a 90-degree geomagnetic shift, just that the last shift does not seem to fit that pattern. I consider the mammoth data very strong evidence not just for a cataclysm but for an entirely different kind of pole shift.
I really wish that the data had supported Ben Davidson's theory. If it did, then we would have one less mystery to solve. Knowing the pole flip pattern and the next pole locations is one of the most important pieces of information we need in order to prepare. If we had a solid understanding of the next pole locations we could greatly increase our chances of survival during the cataclysm that is fast approaching by selecting safer non-polar locations.
I feel it is necessary to warn others about the flaws in 90-degree flip hypothesis because our future is at stake.
This article focused on evidence in Alaska and Siberia because that is where there is plant and animal life evidence frozen in time. This cataclysm that befell the megafauna in the Arctic was a global event with disaster striking all continents. Based on the documentation presented here, I suspect that we are facing a global disaster involving an ocean-displacing tsunami, continental flooding, terrible wind/lightning/hail storms, massive volcanic activity, and a planetary long-duration earthquake. In this article I did not delve into some other aspects of the cataclysm, such as increased solar radiation exposures that likely play a role in the extinction event, as discussed in The Role of Geomagnetic Field Intensity in Late Quaternary Evolution of Humans and Large Mammals. Another interesting part of the mystery is the discovery of small metallic balls believed to be of cosmic origin found embedded into the bones of extinct megafauna as discussed in Impact-related microspherules in Late Pleistocene Alaskan and Yukon “muck” deposits signify recurrent episodes of catastrophic emplacement. It is likely that many aspects of the cataclysm compounded together caused the mass extinction event, the sum total of the various natural disasters. All of these elements and a few others give us an idea of what is coming. With these clues we can develop avoidance or mitigation strategies for how we prepare.
It seems that the freezing of the mammoths and the beginning of the melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet happened as part of the same process, during the Gothenberg/Younger Dryas event that marked the beginning of the Holocene Epoch. I presume that the mammoth cataclysm occurred during the geomagnetic excursion that changed the polar locations and it looks like the Alaskan mammoths were "blended up" with plants and soil before being deposited and frozen. More whole animals were found in Siberia than were found in Alaska. This makes sense as Siberia is much bigger than Alaska. But the descriptions of the Alaskan animals seemed to describe animals more thoroughly "blended", possibly suggesting a different dynamic or combination of catastrophic processes: tsunamis, hurricane winds, impactors exploding, electrocution by mega-lightning, etc. It might be that Alaska was closer to an epicenter of the cataclysm. A deeper analysis of the reports might help us understand where the hardest hit area was.
Here's an important realization for developing a new theory for pole location predictions... If the previous North Pole shift was from Hudson Bay, Canada to the current position, then the theory of the crust shifting based on centrifugal force (putting the highest mass at the Equator) seems incorrect. Because the Laurentide Ice Sheet sitting on top of Canada, would have presumably been the greatest weight/mass at that time on Earth. According to crustal shift theory, this ice mass should have swung to the equator, putting Canada in the tropics today. Obviously that is not the case. To me, this implies that physics other than mass and centrifugal force are at play in how the Earth's axis is maintained or changed. Perhaps it could be some sort of electromagnetic "locking" of the position, where inhomogenous weight distribution is of marginal relevance.
Frank Hibben's report and many lines of evidence seem to support the conclusion of catastrophist heavyweights, Velikovsky and Hapgood. The last polar shift was likely closer to a 30-degree flip from Hudson Bay, Canada, not a 90-degree shift as Davidson and others believe. If Davidson's theory is wrong, then using his advice to select a safer place to be on the globe could be fatal as his prediction for the next polar location may be way off.
Proposal
I took the opportunity by writing this article to present most of the elements of the mammoth story that I find interesting. Supportive information or challenges to any aspect of my story that intrigues you are welcome. My interest is in the truth.
I have identified three areas of study that one can use to verify or develop a pattern theory on how the poles might shift: stratigraphy (sediment layering), past evidence of glaciation and paleomagnetism.
The mammoth data is very high definition information but does not go back in time far enough to build out a more complete catastrophe timeline. It yields an abundance of information in terms of climate, ecological assemblage, time of year of the extinction event, etc.
Because the mammoth reports are numerous and a rich source of information about the cataclysm, I would like your help looking for and posting links to information about the mammoths. I have other aspects of the cataclysm that I would like to research and I would like to see the comments thread below become a repository of important mammoth data. Second hand interpretations (Velikovsky's, etc.) can be helpful but I prefer to see the actual accounts of those who have seen the mammoth remains.
I am looking for information that confirms or undermines the mammoth narrative that I have presented. This is a request for studied and intelligent criticism of the assertions in this article. Once you have checked my sources and have done some research of your own, I would welcome your feedback.
If you wish to post more reports of plant and animal life frozen in the polar zone from this era, indicating the climate at the time of death and noting the excavation location, this would be appreciated. I would like to get a clearer picture of the pre-cataclysm climate zone variation and boundaries.
Please do post your thoughts below about my arguments regarding the mammoth evidence rendering the 90-degree pole flip hypothesis incorrect. If you have an argument against what I am proposing that can answer all of the evidence, I would love to hear it. Just keep the tone thoughtful and respectful.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the work of Ben Davidson for bringing this conversation to a global audience.
Research Notes
Here are some specific papers and books that I am looking for, if you can find a pdf, please post a link and share any pertinent findings...
Alaska mammoth stomach contents: Robert M. Thorson and R. Dale Guthrie, Stratigraphy of the Colorado Creek Mammoth Locality, Alaska, Quaternary Research, Vol. 37, March 1992, pp. 214–228.
Impactors found in tusks: Richard B. Firestone et al., Evidence for an Extraterrestrial Impact 12,900 Years Ago That Contributed to the Megafaunal Extinctions and the Younger Dryas Cooling, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Vol. 104, 9 October 2007, pp. 16016–16021.
Tolmachoff, I. P., The Carcasses of the Mammoth and Rhinoceros Found in the Frozen Ground of Siberia (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1929)
O. F. Herz, Frozen Mammoth in Siberia, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904)
Basset Digby, The Mammoth (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1926)
William T. Hornaday, Tales from Nature’s Wonderlands (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926)
Valentina V. Ukraintseva, Vegetation Cover and Environment of the “Mammoth Epoch” in Siberia (Hot Springs, South Dakota: The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, 1993)
John Massey Stewart, Frozen Mammoths from Siberia Bring the Ice Ages to Vivid Life, Smithsonian, 1977
A. G. Maddren, Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 in Search of Mammoth and Other Fossil Remains, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 49, 1905
L. S. Quackenbush, Notes on Alaskan Mammoth Expeditions of 1907 and 1908, Bulletin American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 26, 1 September 1901
N. A. Dubrovo et al., Upper Quaternary Deposits and Paleogeography of the Region Inhabited by the Young Kirgilyakh Mammoth, International Geology Review, Vol. 24, June 1982
Henry H. Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood (London: Samson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1887)
John Breyne, Observations on the Mammoth’s Bones and Teeth Found in Siberia, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 40, January–June 1737
Ivan T. Sanderson, Riddle of the Frozen Giants, Saturday Evening Post, 16 January 1960
V. K. Ryabchun, More about the Genesis of the Yedoma Deposit, The Second International Conference on Permafrost: USSR Contribution, 13–28 July 1973 (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1978)
S. V. Tomirdiaro, Cryogenous-Eolian Genesis of Yedoma Deposits, The Second International Conference on Permafrost: USSR Contribution, 13–28 July 1973 (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1978)
S. V. Tomirdiaro, Evolution of Lowland Landscapes in Northeastern Asia During Late Quaternary Time, Paleoecology of Beringia, editors David M. Hopkins et al. (New York: Academic Press, 1982)
A. I. Popov, Origin of the Deposits of the Yedoma Suite on the Primor’Ye Floodplain of Northern Yakutia, The Second International Conference on Permafrost: USSR Contribution, 13–28 July 1973 (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1978)
Charles H. Hapgood, The Mystery of the Frozen Mammoths, Coronet, September 1960
D. Gath Whitley, The Ivory Islands in the Arctic Ocean, Journal of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain, XII (1910)
Lucas, Frederick A., The Truth about the Mammoth, Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1899.
Neuville, H., On the Extinction of the Mammoth, Smithsonian Reports, 1919.
Any other references from the online book Frozon Mammoths.
Or any references from this paper that are pertinent: Impact-related microspherules in Late Pleistocene Alaskan and Yukon “muck” deposits signify recurrent episodes of catastrophic emplacement
PLEASE POST YOUR COMMENTS BELOW
Read more of the…
CATASTROPHISM SERIES
The Mammoth Conundrum (this article)
Kudos to you for an excellent article full of astute observations on this subject. Probably the best that I've yet to read.
I am a regular viewer of both Ben and Diamond's (Oppenheimer Ranch) channels and find both have their pro's and cons, both with equally insightful observations, but both displaying a bit of over-reach. But that is to be expected. Scientific discovery is like making sausage. Grind up the facts at hand and attempt to form them into something consumable and understandable by the readers.
I've never quite swallowed the 90 deg crustal displacement hypothesis, although I also contend that a sudden pole shift would be unlikely to have geographical implications on the rotation of the planet. We already see an existing rotational wobble that brings us our seasonal weather changes, so it stands to reason that a significant excursion, or full polar flip, would act to exacerbate that rotational variation, with its vast climatic ramifications.
I believe that you make a compelling evidential case for a lesser alteration of the earth's rotation shift.
Ben has some extremely good points on the cyclical Galactic influences that go generally under-recognized in our science.
I just don't believe that pushing the 90 deg crustal displacement shift is a worthwhile "petard" upon which to hoist his reputation.. I opine that it would take far more than a magnetic excursion to result in such a dramatic breakage of the crust from the lithosphere. But the entire Earth shifting to a lesser degree (20 degrees) makes far more sense to me, based upon the available evidence. And the mammoth, and other animal evidence appears to support this.
Again.. truly a magnificent, and well-researched, article.
I appreciate your work and find it refreshing to see efforts dedicated to uncovering the truth. As someone familiar with researchers like Paul LaViolette, Ben, Diamond, Vogt, and others such as mariobuildreps (https://www.mariobuildreps.com/) who present mathematical evidence difficult to refute, I am intrigued by the theory that Earth's mass is increasing at a faster rate than anticipated.
This idea, which posits that Earth has experienced six poles, moving due to expansion, in the past 600,000 years or so, holds significant appeal to me. It could potentially explain slight variations in latitude, such as Siberia being slightly farther south, and other phenomena like tsunamis.
Another aspect worth considering is the lack of putrefaction in mammoths' stomachs, which implies extremely rapid freezing of the animals. I recall hearing about a study suggesting that exposure to temperatures as low as minus 160°C would be sufficient for this phenomenon when air is involved. However, it's clear that pressure and other factors could significantly alter these conditions. If anyone has links or references to help us estimate the speed at which mammoths froze, it would greatly contribute to our understanding of their demise