The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

THE GREAT EXTINCTIONS 245
tinguished academicians entrained at St. Petersburg and proceeded
to the remote district of Siberia where the creature
had been reported. When they arrived they found that the
wolves had chewed off such parts of the mammoth as projected
aboveground, but most of the carcass was still intact. They
erected a structure over the body, and built fires so as to thaw
the ground and permit the removal of the remains. This
process was hardly agreeable, since, the moment the meat
began to thaw, the stench became terrific. However, several
academicians remarked that after a little exposure to the
stench, they became used to it. They ended by hardly notic-
ing it.
Eventually the body of the entire mammoth was removed
from the ground. The academicians, meantime, made careful
observations of its original position. They saw evidence that,
in their opinion, the mammoth had been mired in the mud.
It looked as if its last struggles had been to get out of the
mud, and as if it had frozen to death in a half-standing position.
Strangely enough, the animal's penis was fully erect.
Two major bones, a leg bone and the pelvic bone, had been
broken as if by a fall. There was still some food on the ani-
mal's tongue, and between his teeth, indicating an abrupt
interruption of his last meal. The preliminary conclusion sug-
gested by these facts was that the animal met his death by
falling into the river. A little later on we shall re-examine
this conclusion.
Very special interest attached to the analysis of the contents
of this animal's stomach. These consisted of about fifty
pounds of material, largely undigested and remarkably well
preserved. While the foregoing data were obtained from a
translation of parts of the report of the academicians, pub-
lished by the Smithsonian Institution, the section dealing
with the stomach contents was specially translated for this
work by my aunt, Mrs. Norman Hapgood. Since there are
many interesting points essential to an understanding of the
question, which can be noted only by a reading of the report
itself, and which do not figure in the published accounts, I