A shard of mammoth tusk lightly shaped and polished.
Fossil ivory—just what is it and where does it come from? Fossil ivory includes tusks from ancient mammoth and walrus (and perhaps other megafauna) that died thousands or even tens of thousands of years ago. These tusks have survived because they were buried in the frozen ground of the far north. This permanently frozen ground, called permafrost, has preserved the tusks like a territorial deep freeze. The ground literally has not thawed out in tens of thousands of years in places like Alaska, Yukon, and Siberia.
Deep in the Klondike goldfields a researcher in ancient DNA scans the exposed and melting permafrost. Permafrost is earth's memory of the last 35,000 years or more and is understood by those who know how to read ancient DNA.
My mammoth tusks are found as a by-product of gold mining in the Yukon Territory of Canada. As miners dig through the permafrost seeking ancient gold bearing creeks they stumble across mammoth tusks and the remains of other megafauna of the Pleistocene era. Mammoth tusks are found all over the northern hemisphere, as far south as Florida, but the best preserved are the tusks entombed in the northern permafrost.
Digging out a tusk partially buried in permafrost.
Tusks of the north are most often found broken and partly rotten, but still yield wonderfully carvable material.
Grading and weighing broken but nicely carvable mammoth tusks.
Occasionally a mammoth tusk is found intact or intact enough to restore; these are treated with special care. The story of survival of these tusks is awe-inspiring!
My son, Matyas, holding a very rare 35,000 year old baby mammoth tusk up in the Klondike goldfields.
There is nothing simple about finding Mammoth tusks in frozen soil. In Siberia people actively search for tusks, but in North America it's the gold miners who excavate these tusks as a by-product of mining. These gold miners own the mineral rights to the ground they mine and, once inspected by paleontologists, they are allowed to sell the tusks they unearth.
Miners with an unusually spectacular find of good carving material and a few restorable tusks.
We've focused specifically on Mammoth tusks but there is another tusk variety we find in Alaska—ancient fossil walrus tusks! Fossil walrus tusks are found by native people on the far northern shores of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean. Walrus tusks make for wonderful material and are more rare than mammoth tusks. This in turn makes them more valuable per pound. I carve fossil walrus tusk as well but will not be highlighting them here on the blog as I'm not directly connected to the people and places where they are found.