04. Progression of the Ice Age
CHAPTER 4
Progression of the Ice Age
Earlier we established that a rapid initiation of a snow cover and a thin ice sheet was caused by the unique climate immediately following the Genesis Flood. But, for a full-blown ice age, cooler summers and much higher snowfall must be sustained. Can these conditions be maintained for a lengthy period? This chapter will focus on the continuing climate from the initial inception of glaciation to nearly the time of glacial maximum. As the ice age progressed, unusual plant and animal associations occurred, and the woolly mammoth found a suitable home in Siberia and Alaska.
Volcanic Reinforcement The volcanic dust and aerosols that initiated the post-Flood ice age would gradually settle out. But the earth may be expected to have continued tectonically unstable, with a high level of volcanism for years after the Flood, similar to the aftershocks from a large earthquake. Figure 4.1 depicts the postulated volcanism from the time of the Flood to glacial maximum, which is defined as the time the largest volume of ice covered the land. Since volcanic eruptions are episodic, peaks and lulls would be superimposed on a gradual decline as the earth slowly returned to the present level of geophysical equilibrium. High volcanism would reinforce the initial cooling immediately following the Flood.
Surface sediments deposited soon after the Flood attest to extensive tectonic movements and volcanism. Charlesworth (1957, p. 601) writes: “... signs of Pleistocene vulcanicity and earth-movements are visible in all parts of the world.” In the context of the Flood model, Whitcomb and Morris (1961, p. 312) add:
Evidently the tectonic and volcanic disturbances which played such a large part in the initiation of the Flood, as well as in the uplift of the land at its close, continued with only gradually lessening intensity for many centuries thereafter.
Although people have been impressed by recent volcanic eruptions, these are insignificant compared to post-Flood eruptions (Kerr, 1989b, p. 128). Mount St. Helens, which erupted in 1980, seemed impressive. A dry “fog” traveled as far eastward as central Montana that blocked out much of the sunlight for two days. However, Mount St. Helens was small compared to other eruptions of the past 300 years. The largest of these eruptions include Laki, Iceland, in 1783; Tambora, in 1815; and Krakatoa, in 1883. But these modern eruptions are considered so insignificant compared to volcanic explosions in the more remote past, that the volcanic ash transported away from the immediate vicinity of their vents is not expected to be discernible in the future (Froggatt et al., 1986, p. 578). The ice age volcanoes left huge deposits of ash. In the western United States alone, more than 68 ash falls, coinciding with the ice age, have been recognized (Izett, 1981). The size of the ash beds indicate that some of these eruptions were gigantic. An exceptionally large ice age eruption was recently discovered in New Zealand (Froggatt et al., 1986). This eruption spread a distinct layer of ash over at least ten million square kilometers of the South Pacific Ocean. Based on correlations with modern volcanic eruptions, the dust and aerosol loading from the largest post-Flood volcanoes was on the order of the atmospheric contamination postulated for the worst nuclear winter scenarios. In these scenarios, almost all sunlight is blocked out over the entire world (Rampino et al., 1985; Froggatt et al., 1986, p. 581). The popular interpretation extends all these ice age eruptions into a time span of several million years, and hence obscures their significance for an ice age. Telescoping all the ice age eruptions into a short period after the Flood assures that cool summer temperatures, due to volcanism, would continue over mid and high latitude continents.
Another likely source of volcanic dust and aerosols is basaltic lava flows, such as those found on the Columbian Plateau in the northwest United States. These flows are now believed to have introduced significant amounts of aerosols into the upper atmosphere, partly by local explosive volcanism. It is estimated that a total of around 200,000 km3 of basalt accumulated rapidly from up to 150 flows on the Columbian Plateau (Hooper, 1982). For instance, the Roza member of the Columbian sequence is estimated to have spread to a distance of 300 kilometers in just a few days.
Earlier investigators assumed that emission plumes from these relatively quiet basaltic eruptions did not remain in the atmosphere long. Modern evidence suggests this is not true (Stothers et al., 1986). The Laki basaltic fissure eruption on Iceland, in 1783, produced a long-lasting dry fog in northwest Europe. The sulfuric add haze from Laki has been estimated to be the cause of famine and epidemics resulting from a 5°C cooling of the Northern Hemisphere (Schneider, 1983; Devine et al., 1984; Weisburd, 1987). The highest acidity level in Greenland ice cores over the past 1,000 years corresponds to the Laki eruption (Bradley, 1985, pp. 143, 144). The acidity level represents the amount of aerosols placed in the upper atmosphere by volcanic eruptions.
Strong atmospheric convection currents, similar to those that occur in thunderstorms, generated by the hot lava flow, together with the explosive activity that did occur, are the likely mechanisms for introducing volcanic dust and aerosols into the upper atmosphere (Devine et al., 1984, p. 6321; Stothers et al., 1986). Furthermore, debris from this type of eruption contains about ten times the amount of sulfur compounds per cubic meter than does debris from the more explosive eruptions. Thus, basaltic lava flows may have even more potential for causing climatic cooling than the more explosive eruptions.
There is a question as to whether large basalt lava plateaus, which are found in many areas of the world, are Flood or post-Flood deposits. Standard geological dating places these basaltic plateaus in the pre-Quaternary portion of the standard time scale-the portion containing what the creationist model considers to be Flood deposits. The huge Deccan lava flows in India are six times the size of the Columbian Plateau flows, and cover an area the size of France. They are not precisely dated, but according to potassium-argon dating, they range from 30 to 80 million years old in the standard time scale (Weisburd, 1987). Within the Creation-Flood model, at least some of these flows may be post-Flood. If they are fresh looking and show no surface signs of being erupted under the sea, such as the existence of pillow lavas, they probably are post-Flood. Any one lava plateau may have begun during the Flood, and continued forming afterwards. Nevins (1974) believes the volcanic strata of the John Day Country of northeast Oregon, which is part of the Columbian Lava Plateau, is post-Flood, although geologists date it from 10,000,000 to 50,000,000 years old (Baldwin, 1964, p. 104). In summary, sufficient extended volcanism likely continued after the Flood, to provide adequate volcanic dust and aerosols for centuries of glaciation (Figure 4.1). During volcanic lulls, more sunlight would penetrate to the surface, but the higher albedo of greater cloudiness than at present, and of fresh snow, as well as the effect of decreasing carbon dioxide, would modify the heating of the atmosphere to a minor increase. Variable volcanism would play a significant role at the margins of the ice sheets, by causing fluctuations of the ice edge. High volcanic dust and aerosol loading would cause glacial advances, while low volcanism would cause glacial retreats.
Post-Flood Ocean Circulation
During glaciation, not only would the mid-latitude continents continue cold, but, also, the adjacent oceans would remain warm. As a result, strong evaporation, especially during storms, would ensure progressive buildup and expansion of the ice sheets. A warm North Atlantic Ocean is a phenomenon that can only be hoped for by uniformitarian scientists, but its importance as the moisture source for glaciation is recognized (Ruddiman and McIntyre, 1979).
Why would the oceans adjacent to cold continents remain warm? At the beginning of the ice age, the oceans, as a result of mixing during the Flood, were generally the same warm temperature from top to bottom, and from pole to pole. As surface water cooled and became denser at mid and high latitudes, the water would sink, and be replaced by lighter, warm water from below, causing warm surface water temperatures to prevail at mid and high latitudes for a long time.
Oxygen isotope changes in foraminifera indicate that the bottom water temperature was likely relatively warm at the end of the Flood and also during the beginning of the ice age: “The oxygen isotope and other data point to the startling conclusion that the deep ocean was much warmer than now during most of the last 100 million years” (Anonymous, 1978, p. 40). For example, Paleocene ocean-bottom temperatures are claimed in uniformitarian calculations to have been as warm as 55°F. Late Cretaceous oceans are specified a little warmer than Paleocene (Frakes, 1979, p. 190). Normally, pre-Quaternary sediments are classified as Flood deposits. However, the foraminifera shells are unconsolidated on the bottom of the ocean, and likely were deposited in the late stages of the Flood, and in the ice age (see Chapter 8). Although warmer than the present ocean, these temperatures are significantly cooler than claimed, in this monograph, for the ocean temperature at the beginning of the ice age (see Chapter 5). Given the many variables and assumptions in oxygen isotope temperature estimates, we should not use the uniformitarian numbers quantitatively, but would consider their qualitative trend to be in the right direction. The cooler water, formed at the surface in the post-Flood oceans, would continue to sink and spread out along the bottom, gradually filling all the ocean basins in the world (see Figure A1.1). This overturning would be more rapid than at present, because of the large density contrast between the chilled and highly saline (due to evaporation) surface water, and the warm water below the surface. In today’s climate, the cold water found worldwide just below the thermocline, is formed at the surface in two areas of the world-just off the coast of Antarctica and in the Norwegian and Greenland Seas of the North Atlantic Ocean (Kennett, 1982, pp. 250-257). The northern North Pacific does not form cold deep water, because the salinity, which also determines the water density, is too low. The deep-Pacific cold water is maintained by Antarctic bottom water. The areas of deep water formation are relatively small, and the cold water is generated mainly during winter. As a result, the turnover time of the ocean is very slow at present-about 1,000 years. In the early post-Flood climate, the downwelling of ocean water would occur over a much broader area of the mid and high-latitude ocean than it does at present. Generally, this area would correspond to the area of moderate-to-high evaporation, as estimated in Figure 3.9. This high rate of downwelling must be balanced by concomitant large upwelling in other areas of the ocean. This rapid turnover of ocean water would be significant for the production of biogenic sediments on the ocean bottom. These sediments appear to be a creationist problem because of the presumed long time to form them, according to present rates (Roth, 1985). But, the post-Flood ocean circulation can potentially account for most of these sediments (see Chapter 8). At the same time, as the ocean mixes vertically, a surface circulation would be induced by the low-level atmospheric winds, that would transport warm water into the area of the main storm tracks off the east coast of North America and Asia. Average low-level winds, which are usually parallel to the storm tracks, are the primary driving force for modern-day surface ocean currents (Kennett, 1982, p. 240). Currents similar to the Gulf Stream, the Kuroshio Current off the east coast of Asia, and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, would be generated in the post-Flood climate. More storms, all year long, off the east coasts of North America and Asia, and probably stronger surface winds in these storms due to a greater temperature difference, likely would cause stronger ocean currents off the east coasts. These strong currents would also be aided by the intensified vertical circulation. Due to the coriolis force, the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio Currents would tend to turn counterclockwise and form the eastern portion of large circular gyres, similar to the present situation in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans. Figure 4.2 shows the likely ocean circulation and areas of sinking and upwelling water in the North Atlantic Ocean during the post-Flood climate.
Postulated surface ocean circulation and areas of sinking and upwelling water for the North Atlantic during the post-Flood ice age. Dotted lines represent sinking water and solid lines represent upwelling water.
Because of the vertical and horizontal water exchanges, warm water would remain juxtaposed with the developing ice sheets for a considerable time. But, during this time, the higher latitude ocean surface would gradually cool as colder water accumulated in the ocean depths. Surface cooling would slowly spread to the mid latitudes, as the ice age progressed. As a result, the storm tracks would slowly shift. The ice-accumulation rate would diminish slowly in areas that were near the initial storm tracks-for instance, over the eastern Laurentide ice sheet. The shifting storm tracks would increase the snowfall on Greenland, the British Isles, and Scandinavia.
Warm, Ice-free Arctic Ocean At the beginning of the ice age, the temperature of the Arctic Ocean would be warm. Because of its polar location, it would quickly lose heat by evaporation and conduction to the atmosphere, resulting in rapid turnover. Large amounts of heat and moisture would be added to the Arctic atmosphere for an extensive time. This would have impressive climatic consequences. Newson (1973) experimented with a general circulation model, in which the Arctic Ocean sea icecap was removed. The ocean temperature was held constant at the freezing point of sea water. The results were dramatic. The winter-time air over the Arctic Ocean warmed 20 to 40°C, while the air over Canada and Siberia warmed 10°C to 30°C (Figure 4.3). Unexpectedly, the simulation caused about a 5°C cooling over the mid-latitude continents between 30 and 50°N latitude. Decreased westerly wind from a weaker north-south temperature difference, and more stationary weather systems were suggested as the reason. A reduced westerly flow results in less warm air penetration from the ocean, and more infrared radiational cooling of the continental interiors during the winter. Warshaw and Rapp (1973), using a different general circulation model than Newson (1973), reported similar findings. The atmosphere markedly decreased in stability over the Arctic Ocean, which would result in much greater precipitation. In the early post-Flood climate, the high-latitude warming would be even more significant than indicated by these simulations, because the ocean surface temperature would be much warmer than the freezing temperatures assumed in making the simulations.
Surface temperature warming (° C) during winter due to an ice-free Arctic ocean, which was set at the freezing point of sea water (redrawn from Newson, 1973). The more the evaporation, the more the precipitation, and this would be more pronounced in the higher latitudes. This is the basis of Donn and Ewing’s (1968) ice-age theory briefly mentioned in Chapter 1. A warm, ice-free Arctic Ocean can explain glaciation in high latitude “polar deserts,” like Keewatin, which are problematical for uniformitarian theories. Donn and Ewing (1968, pp. 102, 103) state:
It is difficult to imagine a source of moisture for the maintenance of the prominent northwestward extension [to the Keewatin district] of the Canadian ice sheet in view of the pronounced barrier effect of the large Laurentide ice sheet to the south. It is also difficult to explain the presence of fairly thick ice over the northwestern portion of the archipelago [Queen Elizabeth Islands] by simple movement from the south as has been argued.
After the surface of the Arctic Ocean cooled to near the freezing point of sea water, it would still take a relatively long time before sea ice would form. There are several reasons for this. First, an ice-free ocean would absorb much more solar radiation in summer, and warm significantly above the freezing point. This stored heat would take time to be released during fall and winter. Second, the atmosphere in winter would be much warmer than it is today, so that the Arctic Ocean would cool more slowly. Third, when the surface temperature cooled to the freezing point during the cold season, the cold surface water must be mixed to a considerable depth, before the surface freezes (see Chapter 6 for more details). Some scientists believe that if the sea icecap were suddenly removed, the Arctic Ocean would not refreeze in the present climate (Donn and Ewing, 1968, pp. 101, 102; Fletcher, 1968, pp. 98, 99).
Expansion of Snow and Ice The point of the above discussion is that the pattern favoring initial glaciation would be maintained, and only gradually change, as the oceans cooled. Based on the amount of heat given off by the warm ocean, a post-Flood ice age would be mild-that is, characterized by “warm” winters and cool summers. The ice sheets would be temperate, wet-based, and move rapidly (see Chapter 7). They would grow and spread into areas that were too warm for a perennial snow cover at the beginning of the ice age.
Figure 4.4 estimates the area covered by ice in the Northern Hemisphere, and the storm tracks characteristic of the mid point of the ice age. Most of Hudson Bay probably would be frozen over with ice sheets converging on it from the east and west. Mountain glaciers in western North America would descend to lower altitudes, and glaciation would spread farther south into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The north-central United States, which would have been initially glaciated, would be vulnerable to melting, during volcanic lulls, because of its southerly latitude.
Pluvial Lakes and Well-Watered Deserts In the post-Flood climate, heavy precipitation would occur south of the ice sheets, in the Northern Hemisphere. Overwhelming scientific evidence is found for a wet climate, in regions that are now desert and semi-arid. Large lakes filled the basins of the arid southwestern United States (Figure 4.5). We know this from ancient shore lines found high on the hills and mountains surrounding the lakes. For instance, ancient Great Salt Lake, or Lake Bonneville, as it is called, was about 285 meters deeper and 17 times larger at maximum extent, during the ice age. Another lake covered large sections of western Nevada, and smaller lakes filled the currently hot basins of southeast California, such as Death Valley. The ice-age fauna and flora, from the southwestern United States, indicate a relatively recent cooler and wetter climate (Spaulding et al., 1983; Spaulding, 1985). This evidence is partially based on fossils and actual plant debris from preserved packrat middens (post-Flood), which indicate that pigmy conifers and woodland vegetation grew in the lower deserts-even in Northern Mexico, and subalpine conifers, including Douglas Fir, inhabited the higher deserts. The wetter climate is called the pluvial period by paleoclimatologists, and in the southwestern United States occurred during the ice age, since ancient shore lines in the Owens Valley of eastern California have been connected to end moraines of former Sierra Nevada glaciers (Flint, 1971, p. 444).
Pluvial lakes in the southwestern United States during the ice age.
Pluvial lakes are also found in many other now dry areas of the world-specifically Mexico, the antiplano of South America, Australia, Africa, and western and central Asia. A particularly impressive example of a pluvial lake is ancient Lake Chad, in north Africa. “Lake Chad was formerly nearly 1,000 km long, requiring a water intake 16 times greater than at present, in an area that is now mostly desert...” (Sutcliffe, 1985, p. 22). The eastern Sahara Desert is now known to have been well-watered not very long ago. New technology allows radio-wave observation through the dry, featureless sand of the desert (McCauley et al., 1982). Scientists were amazed to find an old drainage network, with some channels as large as the Nile River Valley. Most amazing of all, the eastern Sahara Desert now receives rain at any one locality only once every 30 to 50 years! Fossils of many animals have been discovered, including the elephant, hippopotamus, buffalo, crocodile, giraffe, antelope, and rhinoceros (Kerr, 1984; Pachur and Kröpelin, 1987). Some of these animals are aquatic, implying very wet conditions. This wet climate occurred rather recently, as suggested by degenerate crocodiles that still survive in isolated western Sahara lakes (Charlesworth, 1957, p. 1113).
Rock pictures and carvings depicting these animals are well-preserved, and so cannot be very old (Nilsson, 1983, p. 342). These pictures not only show that man once lived in the Sahara Desert, but also that the pluvial period is mainly a post-Flood phenomenon.
Needless to say, pluvial lakes and well-watered deserts are difficult to explain, on uniformitarian principles. Flint admits the serious problem of explaining the quantity of rain needed to satisfy the geological observations (Flint, 1971, pp. 444, 445). Hydrologic calculations for the amount of rain necessary to fill and maintain pluvial lakes in the American Southwest are very complicated, and range from double to ten times the current rainfall (Smith and Street-Perrott, 1983, pp. 191, 192). More refined calculations, based on 10°C cooler temperatures and reduced evaporation typical of the ice age climate, indicated that about six times more runoff from the surrounding drainage basin of Great Salt Lake was required (Smith and Street-Perrott, 1983, p. 195). No climate simulation has ever shown such a large increase in rainfall for ice age conditions. Practically all of them indicate dry, cold conditions for the mid latitudes at maximum glaciation, and even before maximum. The initial filling of pluvial lakes, and some of the ancient large drainage features in currently dry regions, can be attributed to the Genesis Flood (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, pp. 313-317). As the Flood waters drained, water would naturally remain in depressions throughout the world. Many of these lakes in currently arid regions would slowly evaporate, but not as fast as the modern climate would indicate. Higher, ice-age precipitation would maintain high lake levels and large river runoff. Calculations in the next chapter will show that the amount of moisture available for rainfall in non-glaciated areas was at least three times higher than today. At the end of the ice age, much colder winters, at higher latitudes, would drive the storm track farther south than in the modern climate (see Chapter 6). Many of the Northern Hemisphere deserts, that were recently well-watered, are along the southern fringe, or just south of the modern, winter-rain belt. A southward shift of the average storm track after glacial maximum-say five or ten degrees latitude-would greatly increase rainfall in these now dry locations. The above features of a post-Flood ice age would explain the abundant evidence, in the southwestern United States, of “... an environment and ecology remarkably different from today’s” (Spaulding et al., 1983, p. 259).
Disharmonious Associations
One of the more puzzling problems for uniformitarian theories of the ice age is disharmonious associations of fossils, in which species from different climatic regimes are juxtaposed. For example, a hippopotamus fossil found together with a reindeer fossil. Reindeer prefer cold climates, and hippopotamuses love warmth. South of the former ice sheets in North America and Europe, fossils display a unique climatic mix. Reindeer, musk oxen, and woolly mammoths are found in this zone, which is understandable, since ice sheets covered the north. But fossils of warmth-loving animals are also found there. For example, hippopotamus fossils have been unearthed in England, France, and Germany (Nilsson, 1983, pp. 223-233; Sutcliffe, 1985, p. 24). Sutcliffe (1985, p. 120) writes:
Finding conditions so favourable the hippopotamus (today an inhabitant of the equatorial regions) had been able to spread northwards throughout most of England and Wales, up to an altitude of 400 meters on the now bleak Yorkshire moors....
These associations are highly unlikely in today’s climate. There are no modern examples of this unique, ice-age biological distribution (Guthrie, 1984). To account for hippopotamus fossils so far north, it has been postulated that they lived during a warm, interglacial period. We live in a “warm,” interglacial period today, and today’s interglacial climate is much too cold for hippopotamuses to live in northwest Europe. Furthermore, they are often found in the same sediment layer with animals that preferred the cold, although Sutcliffe (1985, p. 24) disputes this. But Grayson (1984a, p. 16) informs us: In the valley of the Thames [southern England], for instance, woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, musk ox, reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), and cave lion (Felis leo spelaea) had all been found by 1855 in stratigraphic contexts that seemed to indicate contemporaneity....
Disharmonious associations are not rare, but are common, and include a wide variety of plants, animals, and insects. Graham and Lundelius (1984, p. 224) state:
Late Pleistocene communities were characterized by the coexistence of species that today are allopatric [not climatically associated] and presumably ecologically incompatible.... Disharmonious associations have been documented for late Pleistocene floras..., terrestrial invertebrates..., lower vertebrates..., birds..., and mammals....
It should be added, that this non-uniformity occurs throughout the Pleistocene, and not just in the Late Pleistocene. It should be noted that, in the uniformitarian time scale, the late Pleistocene contains most of the ice-age sediments (Sugden and John, 1976, p. 138), and, therefore, most of the ice-age fossils. The obvious climatic implication of disharmonious associations, assuming animals had similar climatic tolerances as today (in some cases this is a big assumption), is aptly stated by Grayson (1984a, p. 18):
If the musk ox required cold, and the hippopotamus required warmth, and the stratigraphic evidence implied that they had coexisted, then a straightforward reading of all this information could imply that glacial climates had not, as most felt, been marked by severe winters, but had instead been equable. To explain the close association of animals from vastly different climatic regimes, some researchers postulate the mixing of fossils from glacial periods with those from interglacial periods (assuming the warmth-loving animals could migrate so far north). Nilsson states: “The occurrences of such taxa as hippopotamus that are closely adapted to warmth, may result from the reworking of older, interglacial deposits” (Nilsson, 1983, p. 227). This hypothesis is likely based on theory. Glacial animals do not live with interglacial animals, pure and simple. However, the postulated mixing is not a likely explanation for many disharmonious associations, because the associations are widespread, and disappear in post-ice age sediments. Graham and Lundelius (1984, p. 224) write:
Most of the presently available evidence suggests that individual stratigraphic units are deposited in too short a time in relation to the rate of environmental change for this [mixing of remains] to be a likely cause.... The widespread occurrence of disharmonious faunas in Pleistocene deposits also indicates that these associations were much too common to be spurious in all cases. In addition, if these associations are caused by sedimentary mixing, their frequency should be about the same for all time periods; but disharmonious associations are rare in Holocene [post-ice age] faunas, and in stratified faunas they usually disappear at the Pleistocene/Holocene contact.
Disharmonious associations during the ice age are not in conformity with uniformitarian expectations. An ice age, in the uniformitarian framework, is very cold. Computer simulations of the climate at ice-age maximum, indicate temperatures immediately south of the ice sheets on the order of 10°C colder than are characteristic of present conditions (Manabe and Broccoli, 1985b, p. 2180; Kutzbach and Wright, 1985, pp. 153, 159). The climate was also drier, at maximum. A colder, drier climate is also theoretically expected well before maximum glaciation in the uniformitarian system. One would not expect warmth-loving, and even many cold-tolerant animals and plants, to survive relatively close to the ice sheets, under the above conditions. Severe climatic stress should have occurred during a uniformitarian ice age-much more than expected with a post-Flood model. However, great numbers of the animals existed-many of them large (McDonald, 1984). Moreover, as the ice sheets melted, presumably from a warming climate that was more favorable to survival, many species became extinct-the opposite of what one would expect. No wonder uniformitarian scientists are greatly perplexed! A post-Flood ice age can explain the mid-latitude occurrence of warmth-loving animals and disharmonious associations. When the Genesis Flood ended, the plants and animals would spread and multiply rapidly, to repopulate the earth. The tremendous, unused space available would favor the highest possible multiplication rates. Plants would spring up from shoots and viable roots left by the Flood. The geometric progression that occurred can be shown easily on a hand calculator. Two of each “kind” of animal, except for the clean varieties, descended from the Ark at the end of the Flood. If every kind doubled each year, each kind would have 67 million individuals in just 25 years, and over two trillion in 30 years. Small animals, insects, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, would multiply at a much faster rate. Large mammals would increase more slowly (McDonald, 1984). Predation and disease would take their toll, but it would be low at the beginning, since the animals were spreading into uninhabited ecological niches. The rate of repopulation growth would have been determined, primarily, by the rate at which an adequate food supply became available. Thus, soon after the Flood, the world would have been teeming with life.
Since mammoths are of special interest, and will be discussed in the last section of this chapter, their rate of increase will be estimated. According to McDonald (1984, pp. 421, 428), modern elephants usually have one baby per litter, but sometimes two, and give birth about every five years, although the time can be as short as four years. Elephants, theoretically, could give birth more frequently, since the gestation period is only 21 months. Elephants live about 60 years, and are not able to bear young until 15 years old. With the combination of these features, the doubling rate for modern elephants is probably somewhere near ten years. If mammoths reproduced at the slow rate of modern elephants, more than two million would have been born in 200 years, and about two billion in 300 years. Since the ice age did not reach maximum until about 500 years (see Chapter 5), mammoths had plenty of time to multiply and spread across the Northern Hemisphere after the Flood.
Since the ice age began immediately after the Flood, cold tolerant animals, like the musk ox and reindeer, could not migrate to the far north. They would be forced to live south of the ice sheets in Europe and North America, but could move into Siberia and Alaska, where only mountain glaciers developed. The most challenging problem is presented by the existence of warmth-loving animals, especially the hippopotamus, so close to the maximum ice sheet boundaries, and in association with cold-tolerant animals. The climate caused by the warm ocean at mid and high latitudes provides the solution. The warm ocean would have been a large heat source for the atmosphere. Winter temperatures over the ice sheets would not be extremely cold, and areas south of the ice sheets would have been rather mild, mostly cloudy, and wet, in winter. Summers south of the ice sheets would be cooler due to volcanic dust, greater cloudiness, and the proximity of the ice sheets. In other words, winters would be warmer, and summers cooler, than at present. The seasonal difference in climate would have been less extreme, or, in other words, more equable.
England, France, and western Germany, where the hippopotamus fossils are found, would have been characterized by warm, onshore winds, for many years after the Flood. Only in the middle and latter years of glacial buildup would the ice have occupied the northern portions of England and Germany. Before this, the climate was probably wet and mild enough for the hippopotamus and other warmth-loving animals to find a good home. There they would live side-by-side with cold-loving animals who could not find a habitat more suitable to their liking.
Land Bridges
Land bridges, in some areas, would have facilitated dispersal of the animals after the Flood. One such land bridge is the Bering land bridge, which connected Asia with Alaska, by means of the currently shallow northern Bering Sea, Chukchi Sea, and East Siberian Sea (Figure 4.6). Even small mammals, like the shrew and meadow mouse, apparently traveled the long distance from Mount Ararat to North America over this land bridge. Although they could have been transported on a log raft, they more likely crossed over on land. Dispersal strictly over land is a potential problem for Biblical creationists (Lammerts, 1988), but can be explained with this post-Flood, ice-age model, since Siberia and Alaska would have been much warmer than at present, during the early part of the ice age.
Map of the Bering land bridge drawn from the 200-meter depth contour. Note the large number of Submarine canyons along the continental slope in the Bering Sea. These Submarine canyons indicate that most of the continental shelf was most likely dry land.
Sea level, at the end of the Flood, would have been about 40 meters higher than at present, because water had not yet been locked up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Sea level would have decreased slowly, as ice built up on the land. Since ice volume at maximum glaciation, according to this model, would have been significantly less than uniformitarian estimates, the maximum sea-level lowering would have been only about 50 to 60 meters. The Bering Strait would be partially dry land, but still mostly under water at -55 meters, assuming the present depth contours (Flint, 1971, p. 774). Thus, if the topography has remained the same, maximum exposure of the Bering land bridge may have occurred when the climate was too cold for migration. This land bridge probably was initially at a higher elevation, and exposed, but sank towards the end, or after the close of the ice age. This scenario is the opposite to that envisioned by glacial geologists who postulate the Bering land bridge was exposed only during eustatic lowering of sea level as a result of a large ice volume, on land. However, they do admit that the Bering land bridge probably was significantly controlled by earth movements (Matthews, 1982, p. 150):
Emergence of the Bering land bridge is often thought of as being “in phase” with the periods of coldest world climate, but in reality, because of the mediating effect of local tectonism, existence of the land bridge is only partly dependent on eustatic [sea level from ice and snow on land] fluctuations.... In other words, the sea-shore line is mostly controlled by vertical land movements. Flint (1971, p. 773), although accepting eustatic control during the Pleistocene, allows for crustal movement to account for pre-Pleistocene migration across the Bering Strait. If tectonic factors are allowed, then the Bering land bridge could have existed at the beginning of the ice age.
There is a large body of evidence for the existence of this land bridge during the ice age. Figure 4.6 shows the Bering land bridge, which is commonly outlined by the 200 meter depth contour, according to uniformitarian estimates. The area may or may not correspond to the land exposed during a post-Flood ice age, but is probably closely similar. Remains of mammoths are found on the New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean; on the Pribilof and Unalaska Islands, along the southwestern edge of the Bering Sea continental shelf; and on the shallow ocean bottom surrounding Alaska (Charlesworth, 1953, p. 1237; Dixon, 1983). It would be very difficult to account for these remains without the Bering land bridge. Furthermore, deep submarine canyons are found along the southwest edge of the continental shelf in the Bering Sea (Carlson and Karl, 1984). These submarine canyons are far from the mainland, and indicate that most of the continental shelf was likely exposed at the end of the Flood. Moreover, the sediments on the Arctic Ocean continental shelf contain permafrost, which can form only above sea level (Untersteiner, 1984, p. 137).
Land bridges likely existed in other areas, at the beginning of the ice age, or became exposed by sea level lowering during the ice age. Land bridges allowed migration across the English Channel (including portions of the North Sea), the Irish Channel, and the Sunda Shelf, connecting the Malay Peninsula to Borneo. At least, during maximum lowering of sea level to about -55 meters, these land bridges would have existed with the present topography.
Abundant fossil evidence has been discovered, which indicates that large portions of the North Sea floor and the English Channel bottom were above water during the ice age. Widespread peat has been found in the off-shore sediments (Charlesworth, 1953, p. 1229; Flint, 1971, p. 333). In situ, unweathered, and sometimes articulated bones of ice-age mammals abound on the bottom of the North Sea. In just ten years, 2,000 mammoth molars were dredged from the Dogger Bank in the North Sea (Charlesworth, 1953, p. 1230). The Woolly Mammoth The woolly mammoth has inspired legends and stories of ferocious beasts. It is one of several types of mammoths, each of which is not much different from modern elephants. The woolly mammoth was smaller than a modern elephant. A close cousin to the mammoth was the mastodon. This section will focus only on the question of why the woolly mammoth lived in Siberia and Alaska, where its bones and tusks are regularly found, occasionally accompanied by frozen flesh (Tolmachoff, 1929; Farrand, 1961).
What exactly is a woolly mammoth? It is distinguished from other mammoths by its long hair, short ears, and other anatomical features that seem adapted to the cold. In general, it is found in more northerly localities than the other types of mammoths (Agenbroad, 1984, pp. 92-99). This could easily be a simple adaptation by the elephant family to different environments. The classification, or taxonomy, of mammoths is a problem, especially when such unique features as long curved tusks are missing (Agenbroad, 1984, pp. 91, 92). It is likely that similar problems exist for the mastodons and extinct elephants. Mammoths may provide another example of the usual tendency towards taxonomical splitting. Classification of elephants is based mainly on dentition (Farrand, 1961, p. 730), but, like the phylogeny of the horse, significant overlap exists between types. Some authorities point out that because of morphological gradation of dentition between species, dentition, alone, should not be the basis for identifying species (Agenbroad, 1984, p. 91). Churcher (1984, p. 412), referring to mammoth taxonomy based on teeth, and used to establish a time sequence, states: “Thus the dating of faunas or deposits by the relative compression of the teeth is unsure taxonomically. There are lots of pitfalls in palaeontology like this....” Of special concern to creationists is whether or not the remains of woolly mammoths, and other mammoths, are post-Flood. From the evidence at hand, it seems certain that they represent animals which lived in early post-Flood time-not Flood burials. Mammoths are found, together with other ice age animals, in surficial deposits throughout the mid and high latitudes. They are sometimes found in ice wedges within sediments of the far north. (This fact probably produced the belief that mammoths were buried in ice.) Ice wedges form only in permafrost, a post-Flood phenomenon. Woolly mammoths are depicted in cave-wall drawings made by prehistoric people who obviously lived after the Flood. Some mammoth remains have spear points embedded in them. The mammoths in Siberia, as far as anyone knows, are found only in the surface layer (Tolmachoff, 1929, p. 51):
Everywhere carcasses of the mammoth and rhinoceros were found, they had been buried within the frozen ground of tundra near its upper surface and usually on comparatively elevated points, on the top of bluffs, etc. This has long been known....
Although woolly mammoths are usually found on elevated points, or cliffs, the deposits in which they are found are predominantly river flood-plain, or river valley sediments (Farrand, 1961, p. 732). Tolmachoff (1929, p. 52) writes:
Also, on the mainland the mammoth was not always found in recent river valleys, or within deltas, but, just as on the islands, in the sediments deposited by former rivers the channels of which were obliterated later. Certainly some remnants of the mammoth were found outside of any river valleys.... In other words, only a few mammoths have been found outside modern or ancient river valleys. The high elevation mentioned by several authors is usually a higher flood-plain terrace that was deposited when the rivers first laid down a vast blanket of alluvium, and before they proceeded to downcut into that sediment. The combination of all evidence indicates that the mammoth and its associated mammals, were deposited in post-Flood time. Some time would have been required for the mammoths to multiply and migrate from Mount Ararat to Siberia (see earlier section). By the time they reached Siberia, the ice age would have been fully developed in other parts of the world. The mammoths were widespread during the ice age. They extended from Europe, through Asia, into North America, and as far south as Central America. Mammoths are nearly always found south of the ice sheets, but some have been recovered from within the periphery of both the Laurentide and Scandinavian ice sheets (Mangerud, 1983, p. 5; Agenbroad, 1984). The woolly mammoth lived side by side with many other types of mammals-animals such as the woolly rhinoceros, saber-toothed tiger, bison, horse, reindeer, musk ox, antelope, and cave lion. Most uniformitarian scientists try to downplay the large number of woolly mammoths (not to mention other animals) that lived in Siberia and Alaska (Farrand, 1961,. p. 731). But woolly mammoth fossils were especially abundant in the wastelands of Siberia, according to Vereshchagin, of the Zoological Institute in Leningrad, who is considered the world’s foremost authority on ice-age elephants (Stewart, 1977, p. 68):
Through such causes almost 50,000 mammoth tusks are said to have been found in Siberia between 1660 and 1915, serving an extensive mammoth ivory trade. But this is nothing compared to those still buried, according to Vereshchagin, who calculates that the heavy erosion of the Arctic coast spills thousands of tusks and tens of thousands of buried bones each year into the sea and that along the 600-mile coastal shallows between the Yana and Kolyma [rivers] lie more than half a million tons of mammoth tusks with another 150,000 tons in the bottom of the lakes of the coastal plain.
They are also found in abundance on Arctic Ocean islands north of Siberia, and on the Bering Sea Islands. These islands are on very shallow shelves, and indicate that, at one time, there was a vast land bridge connecting Siberia with Alaska (Figure 4.6). This land bridge, between eastern Siberia and western Alaska, is called Beringia. Consequently, a million or more woolly mammoths must have lived in Siberia and Alaska.
There are three questions to answer, with regard to the woolly mammoth’s presence in Siberia and Alaska: 1) Why did they live in these areas? 2) What did they eat? and 3) How did they die? Many theories, which generally fall into two main categories-uniformitarian or non-uniformitarian-have been proposed to answer these questions. Early geologists, like Agassiz, Cuvier, and Buckland, were keen observers, and favored a warmer climate, or a non-uniformitarian explanation. On the other hand, Charles Lyell, consistent with his uniformitarian bent (Gould, 1987), favored gradual changes in a similar climate (Grayson, 1984a, pp. 11-16). Lyell’s explanation, with generally small differences from today’s climate, is preferred by modern scientists (Hopkins et al., 1982). From a climatological point of view, the first two of these three questions require a non-uniformitarian model. The demise of the woolly mammoth will be treated in Chapter 6. Could millions of large mammals live in Siberia and Alaska today, if the climate were slightly warmer? Many scientists think so, but an examination of climatic considerations shows that this is nearly impossible.
Siberia, in winter, has been a frozen wasteland ever since the last mammoths lived there, as proven by the carcasses that have remained frozen to this day. Very few animals could survive Siberian winters. Vereshchagin and Baryshnikov (1984, p. 492) state: “There would be no place for mammoths in the present arctic tundra of Eurasia with its dense snow driven by the winds.” In the uniformitarian view, an ice-age climate would be much colder than the present climate. It is, therefore, very doubtful that the woolly mammoth and the other large animals could survive a winter in Siberia, either today or during an ice age. Even if they could, why would they want to? Surely many favorable habitats existed elsewhere. Interestingly, the fossil remains increase towards the north, and are especially abundant on the Arctic coast and on the New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean. This is the opposite pattern expected from the present climate.
Another possible, but doubtful, explanation proposes that the animals only migrated there in summer, and left before winter. The abundant remains makes this unlikely (Farrand, 1961, p. 731). Another problem with summer migration, as well as with living all year round in Siberia and Alaska, is that summers would have been just as tough on the mammoth and its companions, as winter. In summer, the land is a vast, almost impassable series of bogs (Vereshchagin and Baryshnikov, 1984, p. 492). These bogs are caused by the melting of the top few feet of permafrost, with the water unable to penetrate into deeper, frozen ground. The mud, from the topsoil, is extremely sticky. A few inches of this mud are practically impassable for a man, and a foot or more would probably trap a mammoth (Tolmachoff, 1929, p. 57). Farrand (1961, p. 734) agrees that the mammoth would have had trouble negotiating marshy ground due to its stiff-legged locomotion and pillar-like leg structure. The mammoth wouldn’t have been able to pass over any trench that barely exceeded its maximum stride length. Consequently, the woolly mammoth could not have lived in Siberia or Alaska during either summer or winter, in a climate similar to that of the present “interglacial.” The most reasonable explanation for the extensive woolly-mammoth population at northern latitudes is a warmer climate-the explanation given by some of the early geologists who were not committed to uniformitarianism. This implication for climate presents a severe problem for a uniformitarian theory. But, in early post-Flood time, the climate of Siberia and Alaska, because of their proximity to the warm Arctic and North Pacific Oceans, would have been much warmer and wetter than it is today. There would have been no permafrost, and, therefore, no extensive summer bogs. The winters would have been cold, but probably with temperatures more like those in the central plains of the United States. The animals living there would need to adapt, somewhat, to a cold winter, but would face nothing comparable to a modern Siberian winter, or the colder winters proposed in most uniformitarian models of the ice age. The existence of mammoths in Siberia and Alaska also implies only one unique ice age, because no reasonable glacial or interglacial climate could provide the necessary conditions for their survival. Elephants could not live there in the present “interglacial” climate. A non-uniformitarian climate is required-one which may be expected to occur only once. The second question posed above concerns food for the mammoths and other animals, if they did migrate to Siberia under climatic conditions similar to those at present. From a comparison with modern elephants, a large woolly mammoth would have required 200 to 300 kilograms (440 to 660 pounds) of succulent food daily (Vereshchagin and Baryshnikov, 1982, p. 269). There obviously is not enough food in Siberia today for the ice-age animal population. Moreover, elephant activity would severely damage the marginal vegetation that currently grows in Siberia. The robust and healthy condition of most fossil carcasses indicates the animals were well fed. This is called the “productivity paradox.” Schweger et al. (1982, p. 425) explain the problem this way:
Pleistocene Beringia attracts our attention in part because of the paradoxical former abundance and diversity of large, gregarious ungulates in a region that now supports very few large mammals-a paradox heightened by the apparent presence of this larger, more diverse ungulate fauna at a time when colder world climates would seem to have made for ecosystems less productive than those of the present time. The productivity paradox has caused considerable controversy among uniformitarian scientists, as expected, and is still unsolved (Schweger, 1982, p. 221).
Besides the problem of food, there is the equal difficulty in obtaining sufficient water during the winter. Animals that thrive in cold winter climates today, scarcely find enough water to meet their needs. However, the lakes, streams, and rivers of Siberia are so deeply frozen in winter that a large animal such as the woolly mammoth would likely be unable to find sufficient water. In the post-Flood climate, as already mentioned, higher precipitation would accompany the warmer, unstable air caused by the ice-free Arctic Ocean. The climate would be able to support much more vegetation than it does now, whether grasses, trees, or both. Water would be abundant. The post-Flood habitats of Siberia and Alaska appear to have been a good environment for a large population of animals.