Cenotes in the Arctic?

A cenote is a natural sinkhole created where a cave ceiling has collapsed. These caves were formed by the slightly acidic rainfall dissolving the alkaline limestone. The best known examples of cenotes are those which are the result of the impact of the meteorite that impacted Mexico's Yucatan peninsula some 65 million years ago and ended the reign of the dinosaurs.

Mexico's Yucatan peninsula is low and relatively flat with no surface rivers or streams. However all that tropical downpour would need to find a way to reach the Caribbean. The water runs via several of the longest underground rivers in the world, Sac Actun (353 kilometers), Ox Bel Ha (270 kilometers) and Dos Ojos (85 kilometers). The underground rivers have sustained humans in the last 13,000 years.

Cenote water is often very clear, as the water comes from rain water filtering slowly through the ground. Cenotes were the only source of water for the Mayan civilization and are considered sacred by the Mayan people. The Mayan considered cenotes to be an entrance to their underworld or Xibalba where their gods live and their spirits reside after death.

The word cenote is derived from the Mayan word tsʼonot and refers to any subterranean chamber that contains permanent water. While some cenotes are vertical, water-filled shafts, others are caves that contain pools and underwater passageways in their interior.

The term cenote has also been used to describe similar karst features in other countries such as Cuba and Australia, in addition to the more generic term of sinkholes.

Now, features resembling cenotes are appearing in the northern Siberian permafrost. These cenotes appear because methane gas-saturated cavities are formed in the permafrost. When the pressure of the gas rises, explosions can occur in swelling pingos. The largest is 50 meters deep[1].

Scientists like to call these features hydrolaccoliths. The phenomenon was first observed in 2014 and is the direct result of global warming and activities like drilling for oil.

I wonder if these spectacular methane explosion craters also formed in the last interglacial during periods of warming? It seems to me that hey would have been the ultimate woolly mammoth trap.

[1] Anna Liesowska: Giant new 50-metre deep 'crater' opens up in Arctic tundra in Siberian Times - 29 August 2020. See here.