Question

Question #cc708

Answer 1

When the animal dies, it may end up in water or bogs where it eventually freezes. Over the years, it can become buried in snow.

Explanation:

A common way for animals to end up rapidly frozen in ice is by trying to cross a frozen waterway.

The ice suddenly cracks under them and they fall into the freezing water. The temperature of the water keeps on dropping, and the dead animal becomes encased in ice. They die rapidly from hypothermia.

Drowning is a common cause of death anyway for many animals, so even if they don't freeze to death, they die shortly by drowning. A little later, the waterway freezes.

Animals may also die of falls, injuries, old age, or disease.
If they are swept (or fall) into water or even a muddy bog, their bodies may eventually become covered with ice and snow.

Here is the case of bacterial activity producing a wonderfully-preserved baby mammoth:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070711-mammoth-picture.html

Here is a much longer article giving more details
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/05/mammoths/mueller-text

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There is a wide-spread belief that the frozen bodies of mammoths are sometimes found with fresh plant food (specifically, buttercups) still in their mouths.

This is untrue.
It is a misunderstanding based on the misinterpretation of the original reports.

Here is a website debunking this claim:
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/flash-frozen-mammoths-and-their-buttercups-yet-another-case-of-repetition-and-recycling-of-bad-data

Answer 2

One possible answer is a sudden climate change that caused the mammoth to be quickly frozen and then covered in snow and ice.

Explanation:

There are numerous mammals frozen in the permafrost of Alaska.
bears, dire wolves, wolves, box, badger, wolverine, saber tooth tigers, jaguar lynx wooly mammoth, mastodon horses, camels antelope bisons camel, caribou moose, elk sheep muskox yak sloth and rodents. ( Flint Glacial and Pleistocene Geology pate 471)

While some of these animals are found in colder climates and might have been frozen by accidents in crossing cold rivers or glaciers others are not normally found in cold climates. The number of animals frozen. ( In Siberia along over 50,000 mammoth tusks have been collected and sold) and the different types of animals such as jaguars, camels, and sloths indicate that there may have been a catastrophic climate change.

While the idea of a catastrophic climate change goes against the prevailing theories of uniform process in geology, the evidence indicates that a catastrophic climate change is one possible explanation for the how so many animals and types of animals have been found frozen in the permafrost.