About Those Mammoths

In this article we will address the riddle of the northern mammoths. How could those mammoths survive the cold dark Siberian north? Much of Siberia today is frozen seven months out of the year, and even when it thaws much of it is a bog not favorable for habitation by large animals. And mammoths are (were) very large animals. They eat (ate) a lot, too. In fact, their near relative, the African Bush Elephant, eats more than 500 pounds of green food each day. Elephants are not very efficient eaters - much of what they eat passes through without being digested, and the elephant sleeps only three hours a day, because it needs to devote most of its waking time to food. So how would mammoths get enough food to eat?
Perhaps before we get too far, we should discuss the evidence for mammoths living in the far north. Actually, let's start with just the topic of mammoths living, period. According to Wikipedia, mammoths lived from about 4.8 million years ago until about 4500 years ago, with a few surviving up to 1650 B.C. They were widely dispersed, living not only in the far north, but in locations as diverse as the channel islands of California and in the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. The first question might ought to be why they lived four million years and then died off only in the 0.1% of the time range that includes the present. In other words, how did they live through umpteen ice ages and then die only at the end of the most recent one? The dates alone ought to arouse suspicion from the inquisitive.
Next, we should wonder at the mammoths living in the far north. How far north? Mammoth remains have been found not only in Siberia, but on Wrangle Island, which is north of Siberia in the Arctic ocean - above 71 degrees north latitude - farther north than any portion of Alaska.

The Mammoth pictured above is named Lyuba. She is a young female found frozen in the Siberian permafrost, and estimated to be 40,000 years old. (Actually, she looks pretty good for a 40,000 year old.) So many mammoth tusks have been found in Siberia that it is certain that at one time there was a considerable population there.
So that's the story. Mammoths lived over a broadly dispersed portion of the earth, and especially in the far north. They became extinct by around 1650 B.C., and probably earlier in some places. Now it is easy enough to understand why they became extinct, at least in the far north. The climate in places like Siberia and Wrangel Island is totally incompatible with a large elephant-like creature that needs to eat hundreds of pounds of plant food each day. Of course they became extinct. The hard question isn't why they became extinct, it's how they ever lived there in the first place.

The Genesis Flood and the Climate After the Flood
I believe the answer to the question about the mammoths and the far north can be found in an understanding of the earth's climate in the initial aftermath of the Genesis flood. The first physical cause for the Genesis flood mentioned in the Bible is that "all the fountains of the great deep were broken up" (Genesis 7:11). Rain followed. The fountains of the great deep probably refers to water deep below the earth's surface. There is still today a great deal of water below the earth's surface, and the key point for this discussion is that it is very hot. If the Genesis flood released a substantial amount of this water into the ocean, the ocean water temperature would rise a great deal, and that rise would be worldwide and well mixed (both deep and shallow water would be warm). In fact, many Christian flood geologists who have modeled the flood have trouble with the flood water being too warm. In any case, the ocean water after the flood would be very warm, both shallow and deep, polar and equatorial. Such an ocean would be dramatically different from today's ocean. Because water holds heat so well, the ocean water temperature would take hundreds of years after the flood before it reached anything approaching its current state, where the average ocean water temperature worldwide is only 39 degrees fahrenheit.
How would the warm ocean affect the climate? It would be very different. Although direct sunlight does most of the heating of the atmosphere, the air over the water and near the coast would be abnormally warm all over the world, even in the far north. However, warm moist air in the far north moving inland would result in greatly increased cloud cover and precipitation inland, well away from the coast. In places like the north central U.S. and southern Canada, the increased cloud cover would make the climate much colder, especially in the summer, when the sun wouldn't warm it up as much as it does today. Thus - the ice age. And yet, along the coast of Siberia in close proximity to the warm Arctic Ocean (it is almost hard to write "warm Arctic Ocean"), the warm water would keep the climate temperate, even in the winter. Wrangel Island, north of Siberia, might be a nice place to live. Plant life could flourish, along with the mammoths. One can even imagine Siberian mammoth herds becoming conditioned to migrate north for the winter, since north would bring them closer to the warm ocean. Of course, if they did develop such an instinct it would only hasten their extinction as the climate changed to what it is today.