Chapter 3: Khatanga Mammoth

Professor Nikolai K. Vereshchagin and Alexei N. Tihkonov report in Cranium August 1999 about the Khatanga Mammoth. They found there the skull and other remains of a very large male, 55-60 years of age. Excavated by N. K. Vereshchagin in 1977-78 at a depth of 5-5.5 m in sandy loam deposits forming the left bank of the Bolshaya Rassokha River, a tributary of the Novaya River, which flows into the Khatanga River. The geological age is 53,170 years B. P. In addition to the skull, preserved portions include the trunk, without the tip section; pieces of skin from the trunk, head (including the left ear), and neck; the left forefoot bound in skin, and the right tibia (shin bone) and hind foot. The trunk had a diameter of from 28-30 cm, measured near the middle of its length. The diameter of the tusks is 18-20 cm. Hair was absent on the skin of the trunk. The trunk and its skin were mangled, scattered, and ultimately lost during the opening of the burial by the party of Dr. P. P. Gambaryan, sent from the Zoological Institute to prospect and salvage the mammoth in July of 1977.

Measurements of the sole of the right front foot is 44 x 40 cm. Remains of three corneous hooves were preserved opposite digits II, III, and IV. The sole of the right hind foot is elongate-oval in shape; its diameter measures 49 x 39 cm. Remains of two hooves were preserved opposite digits II and III (Fig. 30). Vereshchagin and Tikhonov (1999:21)

The stratum containing the head and legs of the Khatanga mammoth, eastern Taimyr, 1977. Vereshchagin and Tikhonov Cranium (1999:24) Fig. 29. Its tusks were just as large as those of Adams’ mammoth bull from the Lena Delta. According to my shoulder-height-body-weight scale, Adams’ mammoth bull, with its shoulder height of about 3.2 m, weighed about 6.4 tons.

The length of the trunk, with the end reaching to the ground, terminated with finger-like dorsal and ventral proboscideal processes. … The tusks were larger than those of Asian and African elephants, with the replacement of the deciduous set by the permanent series occurring at one year of age. Tusks of old males 70-75 years of age attained the greatest size, based on lengths of up to 3.8-4 m and diameters at the alveoli of 16-18 cm. Tusks of females, correspondingly, were up to 2- 2.3 m in length, with diameters at the alveoli of 8-10 cm. In males, the tusks curved into a gently twisting heteronomous spiral, i.e, the left tusk twisting toward the right and the right toward the left. In females they sloped sabre-like in a single plane. The tips of the tusks were always worn on the outer surface. As the spiral developed in males, the worn area also moved medially. (1999:31)

The legs were massive, five-toed, pillar-like and straight during standing, flexing only while in gait motion. The soles were rounded, with a diameter of 13 – 15 cm in calves up to a year old, and 40 – 45 cm in old males. There were three and occasionally four hooves on the front and hind foot. (1999:91)

With the diameter of the sole of the six month-old Magadan baby mammoth being 15 cm, the load on the trace was equal to 141.5 g/cm²; for the old Khatanga mammoth with a sole diameter of 45 cm, the trace load was equal to 663.2. g/cm². In comparison with other animals of the subarctic zone (Kuzmina, 1977: 42), these loads were not large; approximately that of the horse, but one and one half times smaller than the load of primitive bison. N. K. Vereshchagin and A. N. Tikhonov (1999:33).

Adams’ Lena Mammoth

On the soles of the feet (approximate diameter = 46 x 50 cm) four horny toenails were preserved. According to the reports of Bolsunov and Adams, the long wool was of black, reddish, and red-brown colour. The tusks, with a diameter of 18 cm at the alveolus, had been chopped off and removed prior to Adams’s arrival. Vereshchagin and A. N. Tikhonov (1999:16).

Khatanga Mammoth

Valentina V. Ukraintseva is Professor of Botany at the Botanical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, in St. Petersburg. She also reports in her book Vegetation Cover and Environment of the „Mammoth Epoch“ in Siberia 1993 The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota, USA about the Vereshchagin (Khatanga) Mammoth:

Mammoth remains, including the head with trunk and tusks, a right femur void of muscles and ligaments, crus and foot coupled in hide with ligaments, and two ribs (Vereshchagin and Nikolaev, 1982), were found in the summer of 1977 on the left steep bank of Bolshaya Lesnaya (Large Forested) Rassokha River Basin, southeastern Taimyr, 15 km from the river mouth (Fig. 8a). The remains of the animal occurred in permafrost sand, 5 m from the water edge (in the low-water period) and 105 m above the key peat bed (Fig. 8b). In late July-August, 1978, the peat retained a peculiar smell of the gastrointestinal content, which was not that of putrefaction. This suggests that the rest of the body, including entrails, had been recently gone with water, when the terrace had been broken. (1993:30)

Outcrop No. 1, whose deposits embedded the mammoth’s remains, exposes the following beds (in ascending order):

From: Ukraintseva, V.V. (1993:32)

Prof. V. V. Ukraintsewa: The composition of palynological spectra of specimens Nos.1 through 23 (Bed 5, Fig. 10) suggests that very severe climatic conditions preceded the time of the mammoth’s death. At that time the area under study was either void of vegetational cover, or it was so sparse that an extremely small amount of pollen and spores produced by occasional plants, got into the rocks, on which they grew. Ground, which had poor turf cover, was readily subjected by denudation in summer, when snow and frozen grounds actively thawed. This is clearly evidenced by a high percentage of redeposited forms in spectra. At that time the area was probably dominated by plant aggregations of polar desert type, which are presently distributed only on Taimyr in the Cape Chelyuskin area. Vegetational cover there ranges from 0 to 10-15%. Flowering plants are rare. No more than 10 species of flowering plants take part in the structure of the vegetational cover. … Only July and August have positive temperatures (1.5° and 0.8°C), but even in these months temperature can drop below 0°C. (1993:38)

The time of life and death of the mammoth is dated by the Zyrianka Ice Age (= early Wisconsin), when glaciers (primarily mountain and valley ones) descended from the Byrranga and the Putorana Mountains, but did not close in the center of the North Siberian lowlands. At that time, watershed plains were open areas with sparse vegetational cover, and the periglacial vegetational complex of the river valley contained meadowlike grass-forb aggregations and sedge-grass communities on banks of rivers and lakes. (1993:39, 40).

Fig 10: Spore-pollen diagram of outcrop No. 1, exposing Upper Pleistocene deposits on the left bank of Bolshaya Lesnaya Rassokha River, at mammoth’s burial site. The position of mammoth’s remains in the outcrop is marked “X”.

Khatanga Mammoth: found at about 4.5 m below the surface of the ground, in layer 5. Radiocarbon date of Khatanga mammoth 53,710 yr BP. But further down in this layer of sand, in layer 4, that is 6-6.6 m below the surface, the radiocarbon age of the plant remains is there only 34,730 yr BP. It is 18,440 years younger, instead of older! (1993:34, 35). In depth interval 4.0-4.75 m, where the mammoth’s remains were buried. Ukraintseva, V.V. (1993:36)

Spore-pollen diagram of outcrop No. 1, exposing Upper Pleistocene deposits on the left bank of Bolshaya Lesnaya Rassokha River, a mammoth’s burial site. The position of the mammoth’s remains in the outcrop is marked “X”. From V.V. Ukraintseva (1993:34) Fig. 10. At a depth of about 4.3 m below the surface, the plant-remains in the sand have a radiocarbon age of >53,170 years. But at a depth of 6-6.6 m below the surface, or 2 m further down, the plants-remains in the sand have a radiocarbon age of only >34,730 years. Actually, the deepest layers should be older, not younger.

Result

The large Khatanga mammoth bull has lain in the very fine sand at a depth of about 4.3 m below the surface. The pollen-research of Professor V.V. Ukraintseva shows us: The sand below 4.3 m below the surface was laid down in a polar desert climate, as we find it now at Cape Chelyuskin, at the northern tip of Taimyr Peninsula, near latitude 77°43´N, longitude 104°17 E. No mammoth (elephant) and no bison is able to live on such a polar desert.

At a depth of about 4.3 m below the surface, lay the remains of the large Khatanga mammoth bull. The silt-loaded water of the glacial rivers has brought this mammoth there from further upstream. With the melt-water from the continental ice-sheet and local mountain glaciers, also large amounts of rock-meal, very fine sand, was flowing into the lower parts and valleys of Taimyr Peninsula. Later on, the river wore down the cut-bank, where the mammoth was buried. The pollen in the layers of sand from 4.3 m below the surface upwards do show us: The climate had become now a little milder, instead of polar desert, arctic tundra of the northern type was growing there. No mammoth and no bison is able to live on an arctic tundra or tundra-steppe. It would starve, thirst, and freeze there to death. Any assertions to the contrary are only wishful thinking. The Khatanga mammoth has not died, where they found its remains. Its burial site is secondary, not primary.

This also shows us: There must be something seriously wrong with these radiocarbon dates. They make here no sense at all. According to these dates, the Khatanga mammoth is supposed to have lived on southeastern Taimyr Peninsula, when it could not have lived there at all, when there was Arctic tundra, when it would have starved up there to death.

The pollen in the layers of sand do show us: Before the Khatanga mammoth is supposed to have died up there on Arctic tundra, it has been still colder. Polar desert, with its very sparse plant-cover, was growing there, as we find it now on the northern tip of the Taimyr Peninsula. But the mammoth and its companions have also lived long before this up there on Taimyr. But not on a polar desert, or on any other kind of arctic plant-cover. Because it would not be able to feed an elephant, not to mention, whole herds of elephants.

The Khatanga mammoth has lived on the Taimyr Peninsula in a mild, temperate climate, before the global Flood of Noah’s days. It has died in this global Flood, about 2370 B.C.E, or about 4371 years ago and was also buried by it. Some of the water of the global Flood must have come down in the Far North as snow, forming the ice-sheets. The climate suddenly cooled down, became arctic. The Khatanga Mammoth froze in the ground, where the water of the Flood had laid it down and had buried it.