Monday, June 23, 2025

Wildlife forensic scientists develop new tool to detect elephant ivory disguised as legal mammoth ivory

Stable isotope analysis can tell apart ivory from mammoths dug up from the permafrost and modern elephants, closing a loophole for selling elephant ivory

Frontiers

To save elephant populations from extinction, the international community banned the sale of their ivory — but selling mammoth ivory remains legal, and the two are difficult to tell apart, especially for non-experts. This leaves a possible loophole for sellers of poached ivory to exploit. Now stable isotope analysis could provide a cheap, rapid option to speed up sample screening and stop the sale of elephant ivory.

“Smugglers routinely use mixed shipments — an illegal wildlife product mixed with a legal one of similar appearance — to fool law enforcement,” said Dr Pavel Toropov of the University of Hong Kong, an author of the article in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. “There are concerns that this is happening with mammoth and elephant ivories. Our aim was to develop a tool that can cheaply and quickly distinguish between the two ivories.”

“Our results showed that stable isotope analyses of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes is an efficient tool to distinguish elephant and mammoth ivory,” said Dr Maria Santos of the University of Hong Kong, first author of the article. “This is because the elements of water drunk by mammoths in high-latitude regions such as Siberia have distinct isotope signatures compared to the elements of the water ingested by elephants in tropical latitudes.”

CSI Ivory

To secure elephants’ tusks, poachers kill them. The demands of the modern trade in elephant ivory have caused African elephant populations to drop by more than 80% in the last century, leading to bans on the trade and sale of elephant ivory worldwide. Mammoth ivory, meanwhile, comes from the remains of animals excavated from the permafrost in high-latitude regions like Siberia, preserved since the last Ice Age.

“Mammoth ivory costs a fraction of the price of elephant ivory, but the two are considered completely different materials by carvers and experts, because mammoth ivory usually lacks the deep, creamy white color of elephant ivory,” said Toropov. “One trader compared them to a ‘Lamborghini and a Ford’. Mammoth ivory cannot be a real substitute for elephant ivory, but its value may lie in providing a legal cover for elephant ivory.”

“The two most effective current methods to distinguish mammoth and elephant ivory are molecular analyses and radiocarbon dating — morphological characteristics are often ambiguous in pieces that have been polished or carved,” said Santos. “However, these tools are expensive, and results typically take weeks.”

The scientists investigated stable isotope analysis as an alternative. Isotopes, different forms of an element, are present in different ratios in different environments. Because mammoths and modern elephants occupied very different environments — the tundra versus the tropics — stable isotope analysis can use these differences to distinguish between ivory from an elephant and from a mammoth.

A mammoth task

The scientists tested 79 pieces of ivory, 44 identified as elephant ivory and 35 identified as mammoth ivory. Some were seized by Hong Kong law enforcement and others bought from carvers or markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The researchers examined five different elements’ stable isotope ratios — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur — to see which would distinguish most clearly between the samples.

The scientists found that there was very little overlap between the elephants’ and the mammoths’ isotope ratios for oxygen, and no overlap for hydrogen, reflecting differences in the water that the animals drank. However, there was significant overlap for carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur isotope ratios. This indicates that targeting oxygen and hydrogen isotope ratios is the most effective way to differentiate between mammoth and elephant ivory samples.

More research will be needed to understand the influence of factors like the portion of the tusk sampled or an animal’s age on isotope ratio variation, as well as to bring this method to a point where it can be used as evidence in court. For now, however, it could be used to provide a quick, efficient first screening step to identify suspect pieces of ivory.

“We hope that the protocol described in our study will be applied to screen large batches of supposedly mammoth ivory objects,” explained Santos. “Samples that have an isotopic signature of elephant ivory can then be tested with more expensive and time-consuming methods, such as radiocarbon dating. This could help combat the illegal ivory trade more effectively and close the potential laundering loophole.”

Journal

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.3389/fevo.2025.1533703

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

A mammoth task: Stable isotope analyses as a tool to prevent illegal trade of elephant ivory

Article Publication Date

24-Jun-2025

Doubts cast over suggestions incestuous ‘god-kings’ ruled during Neolithic Ireland

University College Dublin

image:
Older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza, Newgrange is believed to have been built by a farming community that prospered in the Boyne Valley, County Meath, some 5,000 years ago
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Credit: Tjp Finn

New research cast doubts over suggestions an incestuous social elite ruled over the ancient people of Ireland, 5500 years ago.

A paper led by researchers from University College Dublin, in collaboration with University of Bergen, Australian National University, University of York, University of Exeter, University of Liverpool, and Archaeological Consultancy Services Unit (a commercial archaeological company), has questioned the belief that burial within the ‘mega’ passage tomb of Newgrange was the preserve of kings and other dignitaries, who represented a dynasty that practised incest.

Such claims were widely reported in the media following the discovery that a skull fragment found inside the tomb chamber of this Stone Age monument came from a man who was the product of either a brother-sister or parent-child pairing.

This finding, together with the identification of distant relatives from other passage tombs across the island, led to the suggestion of incestuous elites ruling in Neolithic Ireland.

This was based on comparison with royal dynasties or "god-kings" that practised incest, such as the pharaohs of ancient Egypt and leaders of the Inca Empire.

However, publishing their findings in Antiquity, Associate Professor Jessica Smyth and Associate Professor Neil Carlin, UCD School of Archaeology, point out that no other incestuous unions have been identified in Neolithic Ireland and Britain, and that there is a lack of evidence for inbreeding across prehistoric Europe.

They also say the evidence found at the site does not support the existence of a ‘king’ of Newgrange or any hereditary power or dynasty with a shared ancestry.

“People were definitely being selected for burial in passage tombs - the whole community does not end up in these monuments. However, we don’t know the reasons behind this selection, and why they were thought to be special,” said Professor Smyth.

“Unlike today, bodies don’t tend to be buried ‘whole’ or ‘intact’ in this time period. Before they end up in megalithic monuments, bodies are broken down, sometimes cremated and even circulated around their communities”.

“For these reasons, the media claims that there was an incestuous ruling elite in Stone Age Ireland did not match our understanding of society at this time, it did not fit the evidence very well,” added Professor Carlin.

Older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza, Newgrange is believed to have been built by a farming community that prospered in the Boyne Valley, County Meath, some 5,000 years ago.

Dated to 3340 - 3020 BC, the skull fragment, referred to as NG10, revealed the rare case of incest, which led to claims in 2020 that the individual was a high-status ruler, with press coverage dubbing them a “god-king.”

However, Professors Smyth and Carlin argue that these conclusions relied heavily on unsuitable comparisons with hierarchical societies where incest was limited to ruling families, such as in ancient Egypt, while ignoring examples of incest in non-elite or egalitarian communities.

“A one-off example of incest is a shaky foundation on which to reconstruct an elite, let alone a specific social [hierarchy],” said the authors.

The genetic clustering in passage tombs, such as at Newgrange, typically reflects very distant biological relationships - like second cousins or great-great-great-grandparents - rather than close familial ties.

This, they argue, suggests burial practices were not strictly determined by lineage. Rather than these being the burials of elite rulers or a ruling dynasty, tombs were places where people made their kin through a range of practices, including living, working and burying their dead together.

“We now have some really great examples of monuments elsewhere in Europe that contain people with very close biological ties - parents, children, grandparents etc. This sort of aDNA evidence is much closer to the idea of a lineage or dynasty. We do not see this evidence in Irish passage tombs,” said Professor Smyth.

Given the renown of Newgrange, the authors said there had been surprisingly little focus on the people or the traces they left inside the passage tomb. Newgrange was rediscovered in AD 1699 and its interior had been heavily disturbed prior to its modern excavation in the 1960s.

“Burnt and unburnt fragments from just five people were recovered from the 1960s excavations of the tomb. Due to the high levels of disturbance in the centuries before that, we don’t know if this number was originally much higher,” said Professor Carlin.

Historically, Irish megalithic monuments, and passage tombs in particular, have been examined in isolation from the other structures and social activities of the communities that built and used them.

This has hindered the ability to identify who, if anyone, was preferentially chosen for deposition within.

“[It] doesn't make sense to continue to focus so exclusively on forms of stable, individual rule, in Neolithic Ireland and elsewhere, when the evidence is insufficient to support such claims,” said the authors.

“Doing so perpetuates the myth that only important individual males were socially active, and downplays the contribution made by collective action in the prehistoric past.”

Unburnt bone fragments recovered from inside Newgrange during the 1960s excavations.

Location of burnt and unburnt bone lots recovered during Professor Michael J. O'Kelly's excavations of the the megalithic passage tomb at Newgrange.

Credit

O’KELLY, MJ 1982