'Snap frozen' Mammoth?

Question

What sort of event would course that mammoth they found to be frozen so quickly that undigested food was still found inside it's stomach?

A large asteroid or mega volcanic eruption would be to slow to course it to get instantly 'snap frozen', as that would be the only way it could still have food inside.

Answer 1

Some animals take a long time to digest food, like the sloth - I'd imagine a large woolly elephant wouldn't be in a hurry to pass through food.  Also possible it died from something else before becoming frozen?

Answer 2

There need not have been a "snap freeze" to explain the mammoth carcasses found intact. Mammoths, like today's elephants, have a different digestive system to what we're familiar with. Digestion is a slower process, and their stomach is more of a "holding area" than the acid-filled digestive organ of humans, and only about 40% of the food elephants consume actually gets digested (that seems rather inefficient, but they make up for it in volume). In very cold climates decomposition is far slower, and if the carcass ends up in a low-oxygen environment it can be remarkably well preserved (even without freezing - preserved mastodons have been found in non-frozen soil too). A deep snowfall could preserve a recently-deceased mammoth by cutting the body off from oxygen and halting decomposition, and gradually the snow gets compacted into ice.