This strategy will prevent poachers from passing off similar-looking elephant ivory as mammoth ivory
A newly developed stable isotope analysis can distinguish between legal woolly mammoth ivory and illegal elephant ivory. To save elephants from extinction, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora banned the sale of their tusks in 1989. However, mammoth ivory, dug up from permafrost layers in the tundra, is still legal to harvest and sell. Though mammoth ivory is much less valuable than elephant ivory, smugglers often mix mammoth and elephant ivory together in a single shipment to deceive law enforcement. In a new study, researchers investigated the elemental forms—or isotopes—of oxygen and hydrogen in the ivory and can now distinguish elephant and mammoth ivory. Mammoths, which lived thousands of years ago in cold areas like Siberia, drank water that had different isotopic signatures than the water that modern-day elephants drink in tropical areas. “Our results showed that stable isotope analyses of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes are an efficient tool to distinguish elephant and mammoth ivory,” said Maria Santos, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong, in a press release. Previous tests used carbon dating or molecular analyses, which were both expensive and time-consuming compared to stable isotope analysis. “We hope that the protocol described in our study will be applied to screen large batches of supposedly mammoth ivory objects,” Santos said. “This could help combat the illegal ivory trade more effectively and close the potential laundering loophole.”
Read more at Frontiers in Ecology in Evolution.
