In spite of the evidence of a catastrophic global flood in earth's past (see here and here for example), conventional geologists and scientists are loath to admit the possibility.
We have discussed the fact that catastrophic explanations for geological or archaeological evidence have been out of favor for almost two hundred years, because geological paradigms and biological paradigms are closely related, and gradualist or uniformitarian geological theories support the biological paradigm of Darwinian evolution that became popular in the second half of the 1800s, while catastrophic geological theories severely undermine the Darwinian paradigm and its need for tremendous lengths of time (if the features we see on earth were shaped by a catastrophic event, then that event could have taken place fairly recently; gradual processes, on the other hand, require vast amounts of time, just as the Darwinian theory does).
The existence of hundreds of well-preserved mammoths found over the past three centuries in Siberia, Alaska, and in the frozen Arctic Ocean and on certain Arctic islands provides compelling evidence of a widespread catastrophic event unlike anything that takes place today. In his book, all of which can be accessed for free online, Walt Brown explains several scientific details of these mammoth finds that defy an explanation involving ordinary processes going on today.
Some of these details include the body position of many mammoths, such as the strange position of the Berezovka mammoth pictured above in the St. Petersburg museum, as well as the fact that the mouths and stomachs of frozen mammoth (including Berezovka) contain dozens of pounds of undigested vegetation.
Other details Dr. Brown discusses include the distinctive type of ice found near frozen mammoths, and the fact that these animals are found in harsh, barren locations that could not have supported their massive appetites and need for abundant water.
Theories that mammoth finds of modern times are the product of animals that simply fell into glacial crevasses and were preserved or wandered into freezing peat bogs or lakes and drowned cannot explain the preservation of undigested food in the mouths and stomachs of these large animals. Dr. Brown explains that:
at normal body temperatures, stomach acids and enzymes break down vegetable matter within an hour. What inhibited this process? The only plausible explanation is for the stomach to cool to about 40o in ten hours or less. But because the stomach is protected inside a warm body (96.6o for elephants), how cold must the outside air become to drop the stomach's temperature to 40o F? Experiments have shown that the outer layers of skin would have had to drop suddenly to at least -175o F! Independently, Sanderson concluded, "The flesh of many of the animals found in the muck must have been very rapidly and deeply frozen, for its cells [had] not burst. [. . .] Frozen-food experts have explained that to do this, starting with a healthy, live specimen, you must suddenly drop the temperature of the air surrounding it down to a point well below minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit." 7th edition, 165.While falling into a crevasse or an icy lake or bog might preserve the skin and flesh of an unfortunate mammoth, it would not stop the stomach enzymes from continuing to break down the food in the stomach. In fact, the body heat of large animals that fall into crevasses usually cause ongoing decomposition and leave the carcass in a very bad state, quite unlike the hundreds of mammoths found across northern Siberia and Alaska.
However, the hydroplate theory provides a satisfactory explanation for these and other mysterious details surrounding the numerous frozen mammoths. Dr. Brown explains that the violent rupture of the earth's crust along the mid-Atlantic ridge (which quickly circled the globe but was later over-ridden by the western edge of North America on its other half) created torrential rain, followed by "tons of cold, muddy ice crystals" from water that was propelled high above the atmosphere and cooled to extreme cold temperatures.
This muddy ice suffocated, buried, and compressed large animals such as mammoths that had not yet succumbed to the torrential rains and flooding, freezing them rapidly at a very low temperature and then sealing them under hundreds of feet of ice and mud during the flood phase. While the recovery phase after the flood caused such ice and mud to melt in most latitudes of earth (and the carcasses of animals encased therein to rot away thousands of years ago), the big roll of the earth described in previous posts rotated the specimens we find today into Arctic climes where they never thawed out and were preserved.
This theory explains the posture of the mammoth pictured above. Ice can flow slowly over centuries without melting, as it does in glaciers. "Such a flow," Dr. Brown explains, "pushing Berezovka's body tail first, would explain his forward swept hind legs, humped back, displaced vertebrae, and spread front legs bent at the 'ankles'" (175). The massive violent hailstorm of muddy hail would also explain the dirt in the lungs of these frozen mammoths, which other theories cannot explain, as well as the distinctive type of ice found in conjunction with mammoth specimens (which Dr. Brown explains in greater detail as "type 3 rock ice").
Even other catastrophic theories advanced by other alternative theorists, such as the earth-crust displacement theory, have a difficult time explaining how the mammoths could have been frozen so rapidly that their stomach contents were preserved, or why they apparently died of suffocation and experienced the vertical compression and contortion of their posture that the hydroplate's theory of a hailstorm of tons of dirty ice would explain.
These details deserve careful examination. It is fairly clear that the existence of mammoths provides strong evidence of a violent catastrophe in earth's past, and that these creatures provide powerful refutation for the gradualist explanations favored at the expense of all other theories since the acceptance of Darwinian evolution in the late 1800s.