Response:
1. The reports of frozen mammoths with well-preserved flesh are greatly exaggerated. Parts of cadavers have been well preserved, but in all cases, the internal organs were rotted, or the body was partly eaten by scavengers, or both, before the animal became frozen. The Berezovka mammoth, perhaps the most famous example, showed evidence of very slow decay and was putrefied to the point that the excavators found its stench unbearable (Weber 1980). The best preserved mammoth, Dima, was an infant; its small size and starved condition permitted quicker freezing, and even it had a little decomposition (Guthrie 1990, 7).
There are probably several different causes of the deaths of frozen mammoths and other animals, including the following:
* Sinking in muddy silt (Guthrie 1990, 7-24).
* Drowning/burial in flash floods carrying a heavy load of silt.
* Predation, followed by winter freezing, followed by burial in silt carried by snowmelt (Guthrie 1990, 81-113).
* Fall in a landslide, as a thawed riverbank gives way under the animal's weight. The landslide and subsequent soil creep can bury and preserve the animal (Kurt
