Mammoth Mysteries

by Dr. Mality


Once they roamed the Earth in mighty herds that shook the ground. They were mammoths, the huge shaggy kin of the modern elephant. Science tells us that no mammoth has walked the land in over 10,000 years. But science has been known to be wrong from time to time...just ask our old pal, the coelacanth. He was given up for dead for millions of years...much longer than the geological blink of an eye that the mammoths have been "extinct". Then in 1938, he was found alive and well off the Comoros Islands. There are other examples of supposedly "extinct" creatures being found alive.

Like dinosaurs, mammoths exert a powerful pull on the human imagination. It's easy to be awed by living things so massive. Elephants have always been a source of fascination...an even bigger version of the same creature would naturally be even more of a curiosity. And unlike the dinosaurs, mammoths did share the Earth with living men. We can only imagine how our primitive ancestors regarded these enormous creatures...caves are festooned with art depicting them.

Mammoths were a common, very successful species. Why did they disappear with such suddenness when they were so well equipped to survive? In fact, are they even extinct...or in some frozen wasteland or arctic forest, do they stil roam?

More than for almost any other extinct creature, we know what the mammoth was like. For dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, even our own ancestors, we have bones and fossils. But for mammoths, we have the actual bodies, preserved in amazing detail by the unmelting ice of the far north where these creatures lived by the thousands.

In 1900, a group of nomadic hunters wre foraging along the Berezovka River in Northern Siberia when they saw an amazing sight: the almost completely intact upper body of a giant mammoth protruding from a frozen gravel bank. The corpse was so fresh that the skin was flexible and many internal organs were preserved. The hunters managed to wrench the mighty ivory tusks from the head...for years, there had been a flourishing trade in "mammoth ivory" that was found in Siberia...but then reported their find to the Governor of the territory. For once in the history of strange phenomena, all the proper steps were taken to preserve the find. Despite an arduous journey, difficult conditions and an overpowering stench from the remains, the mammoth was carefully dissected, taken apart and later reassembled and studied in Moscow, where it was learned the creature had died 30,000 years ago. But from what, nobody could say. And this is still the mystery that hangs over the fate of the mammoth today.

Other well-preserved mammoth bodies have been found in good condition. In fact, a piece of meat from the Berezovka Mammoth was fed to sled dogs, who ate it right up. In 1948, an intact baby mammoth was found in Siberia. All of the dead creatures had been in good health...none showed any sign of being attacked by human hunters, whom we know killed mammoths...and remnants of undigested food in the stomachs showed that they had all died suddenly.

In the cases of these individuals, it seems likely they stepped into areas of deep slush that acted almost like a quicksand that dragged them down to an inescapable doom. Mammoth carcasses and bones have been found in groups, suggesting that whole herds died at the same time. It seems hard to believe that these huge and tough animals, well designed to survive in extreme weather, could have succumbed solely to the hardships of the Ice Age.

But that may have been just what happened. Although the hairy giants could survive brutal temperatures, they still had to eat. And if there were enough very bad winters in a row, the mammoths could starve. They reproduced very slowly and young mammoths were very vulnerable to disease and starvation. If there were no food to be found, they could have succumbed by the thousands. Add to this the cunning traps of the new animal called man, and perhaps it was too much for them to withstand.

Or perhaps not. For in certain areas of Siberia...still one of the most remote, inhospitable and unknown areas of the world...there are still rumors of giant animals prowling the taiga...the trackless Siberian forest. The native peoples of these areas such as the Yakuts, the Evenks and others, speak of "hairy monsters" that roamed or still roam and are occasionally seen. Could it be true? If mammoths were to survive anywhere, it would be either the great Siberian taiga or perhaps the equally remote giant forests of Arctic Canada.

There are historical records of mammoth sightings long after they had supposedly become extinct. In 1581, Russians from the West were expanding their dominion into the vast Northern and Eastern wilderness. One of the leaders of the expansion was an intrepid Cossack Captain called Ermak Timofeyevich. Timofeyevich was a sober observer and was not prone to exaggeration or tall tales. In one entry, he tells of seeing a "large hairy elephant" wandering the plains east of the Ural Mountains. The native tribes said that such creatures were not unusual and were given a native name which meant "the mountain of meat". A better description of a wooly mammoth could hardly be imagined.

Reports of natives have continued into recent times, but, as is usual, "enlightened" members of civilization don't seem to take seriously the testimony of people who had lived for centuries in the area. It is worth noting that in many of the same areas where mammoths had been seen, there were also reports of almas, the wild men of the Russian wilderness (in this case, called chuchunaa).

In 1920, the most spectacular eyewitness sighting of a mammoth yet was relayed to a French diplomat named Gallon, who had the dubious distinction of being posted in the inhospitable Siberian taiga. Gallon spoke to a seasoned native hunter who often spent up to a year tracking wolves, bear and moose through the virgin Northern forest. One year while on such an expedition, the hunter found an enormous footprint of a creature he had never seen before.

"It was two feet across the widest part, " the hunter told Gallon," and about 18 inches the other way. The track was not round but oval. There were tracks of four feet, the first two about 12 feet from the second pair, which were a little bigger in size."

The hunter followed the strange tracks and soon found a huge heap of dung that was fresh. He was now deeper into the taiga than he had ever been before, travelling through an area that perhaps no man had ever walked. The hunter also saw a path of broken branches high above his head...made by some huge, massive beast as it forced its way into the forest depths.

Fascinated but fearful, the hunter continued to follow the tracks, which were soon joined by others. After a couple of days of slogging through a freezing wood, the intrepid native finally reached his quarry. In his own words, recorded by Gallon, he described what he saw next:

"The wind was in my face, which was good for approaching them without them knowing I was there. All of a sudden, I saw one of the animals quite clearly and now I must admit I really was afraid. It had stopped among some young saplings. It was a huge elephant with big white tusks that were very curved. Its hair was a dark chestnut color as far as I could see. It had fairly long hair on the hindquarters, but it seemed shorter in the front. I must say, I had no idea there were such big elephants! A second beast was around... it seemed to be at least as big as the first."

After seeing the size of his quarry and realizing his gun was nowhere near powerful enough to bring down such monsters, the hunter decided to retreat and left the forest. The fact that the weather was below zero was also a factor in his decision to leave.

Gallon was very impressed by the man's tale. It was even more striking when he realized that the hunter was an illiterate peasant with no schooling, who had never heard of a wooly mammoth before. Yet his description of one could not be improved on. Especially impressive was his note that the mammoth foot was oval, not round, and that they seemed adapted to forest life. Originally, mammoths were believed to be creatures of the open plain, but this has been disproved. The hunter obviously had little to gain by telling Gallon the story and Gallon himself really didn't stand to make anything by relating it.

No further eyewitness reports of mammoths have come from the taiga in recent years. It could very well be that Gallon's hunter saw the very last of their kind...a sad and lonesome thought. Although Siberia is still very remote, modern technology has stripped away some of its mystery and prospectors in search of oil are now penetrating deep into the wilderness.

It may very well be that we missed the mammoth only by decades instead of millenia. Yet even if they are truly extinct, we may still see them in our time. The plan has often been discussed for taking DNA from well-preserved mammoth carcasses and combining it with the DNA from modern elephants, creating a kind of hybrid between the two creatures. This idea is considered improbable, but not impossible and with advances in genetics and paleontology both, there's a ghost of a chance that mammoths will someday prowl the earth again.

If they do still roam Siberia and somehow somebody obtains definite proof, the area should be declared a protected zone to preserve these amazing creatures from the extinction which so many believed had already claimed them.

This is Dr. Abner Mality, turning out the lights.