A new forensic test could help identify poached elephant ivory being disguised and smuggled as legal mammoth tusks.

Chemically, there’s no difference between a tooth and a tusk, but ivory continues to be a major business — and one that’s driving an illicit elephant poaching trade.

Tusks are an elephant's incisor teeth, and, unlike the teeth of most mammals, tusks do not stop growing. Although male and female Asian elephants both have visible tusks, only the male elephants ...

Poaching has also pushed tusk sizes down in some heavily hunted areas, such as southern Kenya. A 2015 study conducted by Duke University and the Kenya Wildlife Service compared the tusks of ...

Once the researchers identified hormones in male elephant tusks, they could compare them to hormonal signatures, if any existed, in extinct proboscideans.

Traces of ancient hormones were detected in the tusks of a woolly mammoth that lived more than 33,000 years ago, revealing that the now-extinct creatures had episodes of raging testosterone.

Elephant tusks are both a valuable tool and a potential liability for these gentle giants. The desire for ivory has made elephants popular targets for illegal poaching, and it can have a ...

Traces of ancient hormones were detected in the tusks of a woolly mammoth that lived more than 33,000 years ago, revealing that the now-extinct creatures had episodes of raging testosterone.