And further evidence that a flood of immense proportions occurred in the not-too-distant past is the great number of fossils and carcasses deposited in icy, mucky dumps. The Saturday Evening Post noted: “Many of these animals were perfectly fresh, whole and undamaged, and still either standing or at least kneeling upright. . . . Here is a really shocking​—to our previous way of thinking—​picture. Vast herds of enormous, well-fed beasts not specifically designed for extreme cold, placidly feeding in sunny pastures . . . Suddenly they were all killed without any visible sign of violence and before they could so much as swallow a last mouthful of food, and then were quick-frozen so rapidly that every cell of their bodies is perfectly preserved.”⁠⁸

¹⁰ This fits in with what happened in the great Flood. The Bible describes it in these words: “All the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” The downpour “overwhelmed the earth,” being accompanied no doubt by freezing winds in the polar regions. (Genesis 1:6-8; 7:11, 19) There, the temperature change would be the most rapid and drastic. Various forms of life were thus engulfed and preserved in frozen muck. One such may have been the mammoth that was uncovered by excavators in Siberia and that is seen in the accompanying illustration. Vegetation was still in its mouth and stomach, and its flesh was even edible when thawed out.

[Picture on page 203]

Frozen-solid mammoth uncovered in Siberia. After thousands of years, vegetation was still in its mouth and stomach, and its flesh was edible when thawed out