Clement Real — Sudden Extinction of the Mammoth. 505 



IX. — The Sudden Extinction of the Mammoth. 

 By Clement Eeid, F.G.S. 



IN a valuable series of papers which have lately appeared in this 

 Magazine, Mr. Howorth has brought together a mass of in- 

 formation illustrating the life history of the Mammoth. But while 

 we must thank him for the labour he has undertaken in collecting 

 these facts, many from little known authorities, I venture to suggest 

 that some of his conclusions ought not to be allowed to pass without 

 a strong protest. 



The paper published in the Geol. Mag. for July shows a reversion 

 to the old and, I had hoped, extinct theory of violent changes and 

 the sudden extermination of a species over large areas in a few 

 days. The facts Mr. Howorth brings forward I do not challenge : 

 wherever I have been able to check them they show the greatest 

 accuracy and fairness of statement. But the conclusions he draws 

 seem quite unwarranted by the facts, and are thoroughly opposed to 

 the view of most modern geologists, that vast changes need a great 

 lapse of time. If the occasional preservation of carcases of the 

 mammoth and rhinoceros in frozen soil can be explained otherwise, 

 I think we are not justified in bringing into play a permanent lower- 

 ing of the temperature through many degrees, only taking a few 

 days, or perhaps weeks, to complete. 



From the character of the mammaliferous deposits in Siberia it is 

 evident that they cannot have been frozen all at once or through 

 radiation from the present surface, for interstratified with the mud 

 are numerous sheets of clear ice, which must have been successively 

 formed. 



It seems probable that such alternating beds of frozen soil and ice 

 might well be formed in Siberia even when the climate was rather 

 warmer than at present and could support the vegetation necessary 

 for the existence of large mammals. The plants found associated 

 with the mammoth do not appear to show a warm climate, but 

 merely one rather warmer than at present, and probably very 

 similar to that of the Hudson's Bay territory. 



During the Siberian winter the alluvial soil and the ponds become 

 frozen, and in the spring the thawing of the rivers near the source 

 before the mouth is clear of ice, as Lyell explains, causes floods. 

 These floods of ice-cold water would, I believe, throw down a fresh 

 layer of sediment, which would protect the underlying one from the 

 summer heat, and afterwards itself freeze with any included animals. 

 This process might go on in a climate considerably warmer than 

 Siberia is at the present day, as long as the necessary condition of 

 the deposition of fresh protecting layers of sediment occurred, or 



the fold ("great flexure, or rolling earthquake surge," I there termed it) over the 

 very site where the -well-boring made 12 years afterwards disclosed its existence. 

 Being entirely concealed, there was nothing in the position of the beds anywhere as 

 disclosed by sections, or any antecedent borings in the neighbourhood, to induce the 

 least suspicion of the existence of this fold. Mr. Paltou shows a fault passing 

 through the Wickhara fold ; but it seems to me that what he brings in the fault to 

 account for is due to a sinuosity in the fold only. 



