Edinburgh scientists discover mammoth secret in ivory DNA

BBC Scotland ^ | 4 January 2019 | Kenneth Macdonald & Marc Ellison

[SunkenCiv]

Scientists based at Edinburgh Zoo are cooperating to create a genetics laboratory in Cambodia to fight the illegal ivory trade.

While trying to save elephants, they have found ivory from another animal that is now extinct.

In the WildGenes laboratory of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Dr Alex Ball is drilling what sounds like a giant tooth.

Which is in effect what it is: an ornately carved elephant tusk...

Together they are building Cambodia's scientific capacity to preserve its wildlife and combat the ivory trade which passes through it.

[SunkenCiv]

There are approximately 500 elephants hidden in the jungles of Cambodia

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks SteveH.

[ifinnegan]

This excerpt is incoherent.

[Busko]

If they would only defend the unborn Children! Amazing, they worry about extinct animal’s ivory and act like it is going to bring them back!

[bert]

while undergoing a root canal, I smelled the odor of the tooth being ground.

The odor was familiar......... it was the same as that of fossil mammoth ivory being worked at my studio bench

The fossil ivory is from Alaska and is legal and wonderfully colorful.

[Pontiac]

This excerpt is incoherent.

So is the article.

And the title is deceptive.

[CharleysPride]

Wow, that would be quite a trade route:

Arctic to Cambodia.

Obviously the question of how and in what shape Mammoth tusk arrived in Cambodia is pretty far reaching.
-was there regular trade between South East Asia and the Arctic
-how extensive, how long and what route.

Fascinating how scientific inquiry can illuminate dark corners one never knew existed!

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***The fossil ivory is from Alaska and is legal and wonderfully colorful.***

Anyone ever wonder what natural disaster occurred to cause mammoths and wooley rhinos to pile up dead in windrows from Siberia to Alaska, or what caused freezing mud to suddenly pile around standing mammoths freeze drying them till today?

Glo-bull warming anyone?

[SunkenCiv]

Since elephants are there now, it seems likely that mammoths were there before, and long ago. I couldn't find a map showing their ranges.

[SunkenCiv]

Only for people who can't read at an 8th grade level.

[ifinnegan]

No.

Sad you’d stoop so low.

[Little Bill]

The Fist of God gave us a real good whack. I have been looking at some of Randell Carlson's stuff on the Younger Dryads and it makes some sense.

I was born in Utah and lived in Montana, Idaho, and Eastern Washington State as a kid and have hundreds of relatives that live in these areas.

What he describes is plausible from the geology in these areas.