I would say the best explanation I’ve seen by far is that a comet hit Greenland. This caused flash freezing in some places and massive, extremely massive floods in North America wiping out most all the mega-fauna. (No it wasn’t humans it was a comet).

One the really, really, really best expositions on this is an interview by Joe Rogan on the subject.

Joe Rogan Experience #725 – Graham Hancock & Randall Carlson

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/78069283

It’s one of the best explaining this. Here’s a link to JRE #872 which also covers it.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/92862338

These things are super interesting and well worth watching. They are several hours long but you get great info.

Probably useful as a proof-of-concept and learning experience as we work towards bringing back extinct animals like the wooly mammoth, who’re apparently key and critical to sub-Arctic environments and the maintenance thereof…

As an aside, one thing I’d really, really like to know is why so many Pleistocene mammals like the mammoth and mastodon are found apparently quick-frozen in the midst of activities like eating. WTF led to that happening? There’s an apparently accurate story about one they found up in Alaska that still had a mouthful of spring wildflowers in mid-chew, and no apparent reason for it to have just dropped dead out of the blue–Wasn’t caught in an avalanche or anything like that, just out on the tundra one minute, happily grazing, then DOA the next.

I’m not sure I want to know what caused that, or if that phenomenon is common. Strikes me as being really, really depressing to know that there’s a climatic/weather phenomenon that’s capable of a quick-freeze kill of something elephant-sized…

The world is a stranger place than many of us imagine.