The recent movie The Day After Tomorrow made me thing of this topic. This involves the mammoth. As you may know numerous mammoths have been recovered which appear to have been flash frozen. Some were recovered with fresh vegetation in their stomachs and mouths. The book "The Coming Global Superstorm" mentions that a number of these animals were frozen off guard. Meaning they weren't startled by anything. They weren't running. They weren't looking up. They were just standing there eating food. In at least one case the meat of the animal was still good. The meat was fresh. It didn't crystalize when frozen. How is this possible?

In the movie The Day After Tomorrow they imply that the sinking air in the center of the storm brought down the extremely cold air from the upper atmosphere. I find this an unlikely scenario. The reason is that in order to get to the center of the storm you have to go through the worst part of the storm. It would be unlikely that an animal would be out grazing on flowers in the middle of something like this. Given how animals react in stormy situations I find it unlikely that an animal could have settled down long enough to graze.

What ever happened had to catch the animals off guard. If the climate were warm enough it would also be unlikely that there was a pool of surface air anywhere nearby that would have been cold enough to freeze an animal like that. Meaning it would be unlikely that a cold front could have swept through and dropped the temperatures from 70 degrees to -100 in minutes. A change like that would have surely had a storm front so severe that every animal around would have been running out of terror. The source had to have been the upper atmosphere. But how do you get this to the surface without startling the animals?

One thing I had thought about was how air sinks near a severe thunderstorm. Look at mammatus. Those are the popcorn shaped clouds that appear on the underside of the anvil of a thunderhead. This formation is caused by sinking air. But we don't flash freeze when a storm comes. This means the air would have to have been sinking at a very high rate of speed. Even the worst thunderstorms dont come close to doing that. The atmospheric dynamics necessary to generate that kind of sinking would surely tip off an animal that something bad was going to happen. Again they wouldn't simply sit there and graze. This is based on today's conditions. What if.....

Imagine this scenario. Right now the temperatures in the upper atmosphere are decreasing. I was puzzled by this. I asked someone in a news group that was a supporter of global warming how this could happen if the world is supposedly warning. Answer I was given is that the heat is trapped at the surface and unable to warm the upper atmosphere. Basically stating as the surface heats the upper atmosphere goes the opposite direction. Imagine these opposing forces. The building heat at the surface and the tremendous lift it provides. And the much colder air aloft and the fuel it provides for storms. Eventually the two sides get tighter and tighter until the system breaks. In a situation like this it would be safe to assume that storms would be more severe and more frequent as well. Could the mammoths simply have gotten used to the bad weather and simply ignored it. Perhaps they were used to being rained on and simply went on with their business. However this time the system snapped and the cold air had gotten so close to the surface that one bad storm was able to easily draw it to the surface instead of having to pull it from 50,000 to 70,000 feet. Perhaps this cold air had sunk to 20,000 feet or less. You mix up the air like that in a violent storm and now you have the tools necessary to bring this to the surface. Take the extreme lifting in a violent thunderstorm and drive it into a massive pool of bitter cold air not to far above the surface and you have what would be necessary to flash freeze animals.

Just for the record shallow cold air pockets can cause extreme weather events. The recent hail storm in Denver is a perfect example of that. The thunderstorm didn't have far to go to bring the moisture up into a layer of freezing temps. As such the result was a massive amount of hail being dumped. Same thing happened in Watts back in November 2003.

If anyone else has a theory on how these animals could have been frozen I would love to hear it.

(I wonder if ziplock makes a baggy in mammoth sise?)

Dont want all that fresh flash froze meat to go to waste now DO WE??

waste not want not Granny always said.

my bad.


[edit on 11-6-2004 by theRiverGoddess]

How to flash freeze a mammoth?
good question...but I think I have a better one...
How to flash fry a mammoth?
mmm deep fried mammoth

Well it WAS a serious question. Given our rapidly changing climate and the fact that it has happened before I thought maybe it would be important to try and understand how something so catastrophic could have happened without warning (so it would seem anyway). If something like there were to happen today over a major population center like Chicago millions of people could be frozen on their feet. I would have said LA but who would miss it? :-) . Seriously though. If this is a result of cold air being drawn down from the upper atmosphere I think we should keep an eye on this. Right now the temperatures aloft are falling fast. This should interest/concern people.

Maybe the storm formed, dumped 10ft of snow on them, froze them in under a minute?
Like a few creationist believe. Warm planet, cold asteroid, mix, causes the layer of water in the sky to rain except the poles where the breaking up asteroid are drawn to because of the magnetic field where it snows because the asteroid is cold ice. Lots of rain, lots of snow, Noah and his arky. yadah yadah yadh. 40 days 40 nights Earth flooded, mammoths deep fryed...err...froze. Ice age....

It is baffeling, expecialy since animals are always the first to know about dangerous weather.

I see two possible explanations:


1) The mammooths did not react to the extreme cold because they were used ot it. They did not know of course that the temperature was going to drop below -100. It is no coincidence that no other frozen animals have been found near the mammooths.

2) the freezing was not a result of a giant and sudden superstorm, but a result of Earth flipping. It happens that mamooths were frozen and therefore kept.

Teknik your post might have some merrit had it not been for one thing. A mammoth was found where the meat didn't crystalize. You have to flash freeze to do this. Also explain why there were flowers? This doesn't happen in the winter does it? And fresh vegetation? And I believe there were a very large number found. You say these were the only ones. Remember these were the largest animals and naturally they stand out alot more than lets say a squirrel. One most also consider that these animals may not have been particularly intelligent. Granted normal elephans are intelligent animals but there is no guarantee that these were. Another idea that I have entertained is that perhaps man back then raised these animals much like people today do with cows. The vegetation may have come from a food stash that the people had put aside for the winter months. There is no reason to think that people back then were not smart enough to keep a few animals around to be killed later for food. And if they were tied up somehow perhaps they were unable to flee to warmer climate and simply froze to death. But then again that doesn't explain the edible meat. Only thing that explains the edible meat is a flash freeze. Thats the only way you can freeze an animal that size and still preserve it.

masterp... I don't believe the earth ever flipped. I think it would be physically impossible without the movement continuing. You would need something to start the motion and something to stop the motion.

What about the idea of the atmosphere going through a turning over process. Colder air sinks and warm air rises. As the air aloft becomes colder and heavier who is to say that it simply didn't sink to the surface and force the warm air up? If greenhouse gases are trapping warm air at the surface and causing the upper atmosphere to get colder you would think at some point a turning over process would occur.

Originally posted by Indy
In the movie The Day After Tomorrow they imply that the sinking air in the center of the storm brought down the extremely cold air from the upper atmosphere. I find this an unlikely scenario.

that part of the movie bothered me the most. it's impossible for such a thing to happen, no matter how low of a pressure is in the eye of the storm. the air in the center of a hurricane, for example, is entire updrafts. this is because all around the low pressure eye is the higher pressure of the storm. so the air rushes into the eye, and up... it doesn't suck any air down. /endrant

i just had to say that, so that way no one would think that a hurricane in any way could ACTUALLY do such a thing... not to knock your post.

otherwise, your theory is quite a good one. pretty interesting, and i think it could be plausible.

Originally posted by masterp
2) the freezing was not a result of a giant and sudden superstorm, but a result of Earth flipping. It happens that mamooths were frozen and therefore kept.

what...? how about no. think before you post. the earth flipping? that's impossible, to say the least. or do you mean the poles flipping? all that does is change the orientation of the earth's magnetic field, not freeze everything. and the way you said that sort of makes it sound like you're saying the earth "flipped" in order for the mammoths to be frozen...

I don't believe the movie for the same reason. There were a number of flaws in the movie when it came to the storms. Why in some pics it was turning clockwise and in others it was counter-clockwise. They blew that part of the movie. Oh well. Its a movie :-) . The doom in the eye makes for a good story but its just that... a story.

hummm...ok . just folow my idea:

imagine i am a mamooth, i go eat some good grass some where, and for other weird reason diferent then cold, i die! my carcass will be there, but....suddenly, a violent storm was forming at that time and after all that you are talking about, i flash freeze.

so, i have imaginated this to proof what?, just to proof that mammoths you talk, can evenctualy do not be kiled by a suden cold! that sudden flash cold can had happen after they'r deads. if i remember well , mammoths used to walk close each other, so if the "flash cold death" was correct, we must have discovered many many more together! don't you think? but no, i do not recall a escavation place where they have find 5 or 8 mammoths in a row, im not sure, but i dont have any knoledge of a finding like this!

Your theory is a good one and does raise another possibility. That the mammoths found with food in their mouths were animals with problems. Perhaps the reason they died the way they did is because they had mental problems (seriously) and did not react to the changes happening around them. These could have been the sick animals that the rest of the group left behind. If you have 10,000 animals the odds of having some with mental or physical problems is good. If 1% had problems you are talking 100 strays. Look at humans. If we had a 1% failure rate we'd be in great shape. LOL.

Yea, if the mammoth was already in cold weather, its highly probably it simply became incapacitated and died. I guess some things to check would be if the size of the mammoth was comparable to their normal size (could have fallen, and frozen)?
COuld an avalanche have come down upon it?
What kind of flower was there, one pointing to a fairly temperate climate would raise some interesting questions, but if it is a native of cold tundras, then probably something else...

The stories I have seen imply that its grass and flowers. And many were found standing up. Not crushed along the side of hills/cliffs where they could have just been burried. We may never solve this problem. Or worse one day we may be given the answer.

i for one am very sceptical about that "flash freeze" thing,
no matter how well you "flash freeze" your meat it will always start to crystalize at some point in time if you keep it frozen,
trust me,

fish and game taste mush after a couple of years because it crystalizes with time.

you can eat it but its not ala resturante beef york.

big mammals tend to sleep/eat/poo/fornicate/give birth standing, its just easier for em, then always put energy in getting up on your feet.

but to the topic of cold ,

i remember a classic quote from a museum guide in stockholm and he was explaining the ways they forwarded weather reports from the battle field and one of the quotes was ,

" it was so cold the pee froze before it hit the ground "


and they where somewhere near or in the mountains between norway and sweden
but with a bit of wind and abit below -20c it easiely gets -30c or even -40c below ,
but usualy when it gets that cold you dont have winds so its not an everyday hell but
i guess its possible for pee to freeze before it hits the ground

and i guess most who have seen pictures from wars have seen the ones of horses from ww2 on their back with their stiff legs in the air or standing up, still hooked to carriges ,
frozen due to normal winter with frozen food in their guts.

things freeze fast in nature

i take it its possible for a group of mammoths to freeze on spot over night
a little bit of wet snow during the day and then over night a big drop in temperature and they are doomed.

could even be if they where found near each other,
that the furled together to concentrate the body warmth but i take it at some point mother earth reaped its souls.

on a side note ,

i bet there are many intrested in that pice of fresh meat since its seams there is a lack of it around on the open market for exotic foods or for thouse in the scientific society.

heck i would have thougth that to be the "holy grail" for anyone with a need for fresh mammoth meat ?

do i hear 10Bill , 15Bill, 20Bill ? going once .....

but who needs money when you have creationism

Mammoths were not flash frozen, that's something of a urban legend.
Most fell on frozen ground, and were preserved in the permafrost.
They are found well preserved, about the same as you'd find if you put something in a freezer for several years.
I remember vaguely that a young mammoth was found that had drowed, and was extremely well preserved again froze in permafrost.