Re: Re[2]: Swimming mammoths and climate change

["Nicholas R. Longrich" <longrich@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>]

On Wed, 10 Apr 1996 Tompaleo@aol.com wrote:

> In summary the factors aginst are;
> 1)To far to swim  (26 miles)
> 2)Ocean Currents and maritime weather
> 3)Sharks and Orcas who's feeding frenzies would take out the entire lumbering
> lot
> 4)Very low survival assuming any reached at all
> 5)Inevitable interbreeding leading to genetic mutation, sterility and
> extinction!

        Okay:
1) deer can get at least that far out to sea- my father has observed them 
in deep water in Alaska
2) see above
3) seems improbable, at best. Surfers in california spend a lot of time 
in water without frequent problems.
4) what's the argument behind this?
5) cheetahs, while a sickly population, are surviving despite the fact 
they're so inbred. I heard something once stated to the effect 
that they might even be the remains of a single pregnant female that 
survived the Pleistocene extinctions. 

        How about icebergs as a transportation method, if we're 
desperate? A polar bear drifted ashore on the northern end of the Kodiak 
Archipelago when it was transported by iceberg. So a herd of mammoths on 
an ice sheet breaks off and drifts out to sea. Perhaps improbable, but 
it's either that, or swimming- there's no other way to move a mammoth 
across water of that depth.  

> I still favor some yet to be discovered land bridge. Maybe some paleotctonic
> simulations could be run to see if there were some platform, island chain or
> some other feature could have provided the means. Just slide the two plates
> backwards about 10,000years and start form there.

Kodiak Island is separated from mainland Alaska by an averageof 20 miles of 
deep, open water extending to a maximum depth of 150 fathoms. At no time 
has it ever been any less than 4/5 of the present distance. Somehow, 
ermine, voles, foxes, brown bear, beavers, and otters made it across. 
They sure as heck didn't do it by walking. For bears, transport by ice or 
swimming seems likely, and beavers are capable swimmers. As for fox, 
ermine, and voles, who knows- but it wasn't by land.    

        -nickk L.