Question re: Mammoth Ivory

Danke42 said:
So what you are saying is for a manufactured item like a knife there's no easy way for a customs agent to verify the species of origin short of destruction of the object. Does that sound accurate?

Maybe it's just me but it sounds like there's no convenient test for Customs Agents to employ.
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There's no convenient or easy test if you can't see the endgrain.

Unfortunately if the feds saw a knife that was in question, they would look at the endgrain by any means necessary, not caring about the final condition of the knife.

If they confiscate it and find out you were legal but the knife was destroyed in the process, sucks for you.

I personally know makers that this actually happened to.
 
Danke42 said:
So what you are saying is for a manufactured item like a knife there's no easy way for a customs agent to verify the species of origin short of destruction of the object. Does that sound accurate?

Maybe it's just me but it sounds like there's no convenient test for Customs Agents to employ.
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Yes, for a manufactured item that is not cross cut and has both of the ends covered (e.g., by a bolster) it would be very difficult. Again, the guides that Fish & Wildlife use are geared more toward raw ivory. However, I have some barehead mammoth knives and there is enough thickness visible on the bare end to see the Schreger lines.

If the scales are cross cut, like the last one shown by Locutus D'Borg, it would be quite simple. And his other two mammoth knives are barehead, and if the scales are thick enough you would be able to see the Schreger lines. But for your knife it would be very difficult, and a small sample for carbon 14 testing would have to be taken from it. As long as you don't live in a state that bans mammoth, you would have no problem buying or selling mammoth. And in states where mammoth is not banned, knifemakers can import ivory from overseas and it would be checked by customs before being allowed into the country. Then the knifemaker would be free to use it for knives like yours. Since your knife was made after the 1989 CITES ban on elephant ivory trade, it was apparently used with mammoth that still made it into the country since then, legally I hope for the maker. The elephant ivory ban was strengthened in 2014 and 2016, but there is no federal ban on the importation of mammoth ivory. More info here:

States and Countries Banning the Sale of Fossil Ivory and proposed Legislation

Because of the poaching of African Elephants, many countries have banned the import of modern Ivory. Smugglers have been marking shipments of modern ivory as fossil ivory to get it past customs. Here in the United States, beginning with New Jersey and New York, state legislators have been...
www.aaps-journal.org


The bans are only for selling or buying, not possession, at least in my state (CA). Here is the wording in the CA law:

(b) Except as provided in subdivision (c), it is unlawful to
purchase, sell, offer for sale, possess with intent to sell, or
import with intent to sell ivory or rhinoceros horn.

And ivory is defined as:

(2) "Ivory" means a tooth or tusk from a species of elephant,
hippopotamus, mammoth, mastodon, walrus, warthog, whale, or narwhal,
or a piece thereof, whether raw ivory or worked ivory, and includes a
product containing, or advertised as containing, ivory.

Other states have different language, but most states do not currently ban the sale of mammoth.
 
J. Doyle said:
There's no convenient or easy test if you can't see the endgrain.

Unfortunately if the feds saw a knife that was in question, they would look at the endgrain by any means necessary, not caring about the final condition of the knife.

If they confiscate it and find out you were legal but the knife was destroyed in the process, sucks for you.

I personally know makers that this actually happened to.
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That is why it is probably not a good idea to purchase a finished article internationally. It's better to buy one that was made from raw mammoth that already cleared customs and is used to make a knife here in the US.
 
Exactly. There is no simple test so pretending it's not being done because the agents are lazy is flat out misleading.
 
A durable handle material from an extinct animal from over 10,000 years ago, how is that not cool?

I don't buy the argument that elephant poachers are using the mammoth exemption for illegal trade. Mammoth tusks are significantly larger and have a specific coloration from being buried for thousands of years. It's possible that someone could artificially age new ivory, but it would probably require the complicity of the manufacturer cutting down the tusks.

I don't know about anyone else, but when dumb government officials ban things that don't need to be banned it just makes me want that thing more...
 
I'm suddenly reminded of going to a show where one vendor was having a good time having everyone pick up and get a feel for a knife he had. Turned out the handle was some kind of whale penis bone.
 
Tsujigiri said:
I don't buy the argument that elephant poachers are using the mammoth exemption for illegal trade. Mammoth tusks are significantly larger and have a specific coloration from being buried for thousands of years. It's possible that someone could artificially age new ivory, but it would probably require the complicity of the manufacturer cutting down the tusks.
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A lot of mammoth tusks have the color in the bark only, with creamy white interior that, when cut, looks just like modern elephant ivory. A finished article with white ivory could be mammoth or modern, and modern ivory can be passed off as mammoth in this way. No need to try to color the elephant ivory.
 
David Mary said:
Why not? Worked out well for Jurassic Park...

I think I'm going to need to start making bigger knives...
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Not joking:

Mammoth - Colossal

Discover Colossal's mammoth de-extinction project, process and progress. Learn the facts about reviving the woolly mammoth, a vital defender of earth.
colossal.com colossal.com

They are also working on the dodo bird and thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). I look forward to farm raised dodo BBQ get togethers...
 
Another thing to note is that the Schreger line examination only works for mammoth. Mastodon has Schreger lines similar to modern elephants. But I suspect that a lot of the ivory being sold as mastodon is actually mammoth. I have a knife that was sold as mastodon, but the Schreger lines are clearly mammoth. Buck sold quite a few knives over the years that they originally called mastodon, and later mastodon or mammoth, sourced in Alaska. If it was sourced in Siberia, it is mammoth for certain. Although there was a mastodon in Eurasia (Mammut Borsoni), it died out 2 million years ago, making the likelihood of finding quality ivory very small. Mammut Americanum is the one with which most people are familiar; it was a North American species, and it went extinct 10,000 years ago. Mastodon tusks are not as curved as mammoth tusks. The easiest way to determine if it is mastodon or mammoth is if the skull is found with the tusk, because the molars are very different. Mammoths were grazers and had molars like modern elephants, while mastodons were browsers and had molars designed to crush twigs.

Because they lived in northern latitudes where the tusks were buried in permafrost, most of the mammoth ivory is from woolly mammoth, which were about the same size as Asian elephants. American mastodon were not as tall but much heavier build, with weights approaching modern African elephants. For most of the United States the primary mammoth was the Columbian mammoth, which was larger than African elephants. If you go to La Brea Tar Pits, the mammoth there are Columbian.

I grew up in upstate NY, and the river in our valley was called Chemung. It is a Delaware name that means river of the big horn or at the horn, called that because they found tusks eroding out of the river bank. Both mammoth and mastodon remains have been found in that area.
 
Maximumbob54 said:
Not joking:

Mammoth - Colossal

Discover Colossal's mammoth de-extinction project, process and progress. Learn the facts about reviving the woolly mammoth, a vital defender of earth.
colossal.com colossal.com

They are also working on the dodo bird and thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). I look forward to farm raised dodo BBQ get togethers...
Click to expand...
I want a woolly rhino and sabre tooth tiger!
 
It's illegal in any form in some states, including mine.

We are *never* going to run out of it.

Just look at the bone yards owned by one guy in Alaska who has pulled literally tons out of like 10 acres.

There's so much of the shite, the museum of natural history in NYC dumped thousands of tusks in the East River just to make room and avoid bad publicity after they "yoinked" them from the original owner.

Plus soon we will be breeding fresh ones with regular ivory 😜 science!
 
Arathol said:
Yes there is. Looking at the Schreger lines is not difficult. All you need is a good magnifying glass and a bit of intelligence.
.
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........Oh, wait....government agents......never mind.....
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Schreger lines may not be visible depending on the angle of the cut.

Edit: whoops should have read the rest of the thread before commenting. Here is my blue mammoth tusk Hossom to justify this post:

1000005981.jpg
 
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