Inside Russia’s Woolly Mammoth Tusk Trade

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The title of this video feels like it comes from a parallel universe where woolly mammoths never went extinct

Humans are weird as hell.

"It's nothing serious, just a fracture." A true Russian

Seeing fossils being blasted and destroyed like that is so sad, we’re still researching and finding so much and now it’s being just being washed away, who knows what secrets could have been uncovered.

Your guy has a pretty great Russian pronunciation. You should be proud of him.

I find the various comments quite interesting. Working in this field of science over the last 3 decades I find that most viewpoints were some what biased and misinformed. We know that mammoth tusks have been found for over three centuries by the hundreds of thousands. There is no rarity or lack of supply for their procurement commercially or for scientific research. Many individual collectors will pay in the thousands of dollars for collection cabnet examples. The Chinese are driving prices up dramatically for their use in carved ivory trade in jewelry and artistic decorative forms. This fossil trade relieves the demand for the living species ivory trade and will help reduce the slaughter that unfortunately is still driven by the demand for local Bush meat in Africa. It's counter productive to restrict active collecting of these specimens and certainly does not endanger the livelihood of an extinct species or their living relatives. Clearly many universities and scientific research organizations are studying mammoth tusks and frozen carcasses for DNA and pathology studies like those in Russia, Japan, Germany and the USA. The University of Michigan's program under their fine world class paleontology department is a leader in mammoth tusk research. The greatest threat imposed by the passionate and commercially oriented collectors is how they are changing the environment by using high pressure water dredging on the Siberian topography. Also many other important vertebrate remains are frequently overlooked by these teams as many do not have qualified professional paleontologists to scrutinize what being discarded. There are many vertebrate taxa that are equally if not more important that may be discovered in these sediments. Also it clear that even if it were possible to save every scrap of bone from these collection areas they would easily fill every major museum in the world. Unfortunately these institutions are cash strapped and undertaking such a challenge would be economically disastrous. There is just too little funding. So this science is between a rock and a hard place financially. At best it would be reasonable to set up a partnership with the commercial collectors and the scientific community. This commercial fossil industry is certainly far from perfect but until the general public realizes that some research on this material is better than the alternative, leaving vertebrate fossil to disintegrate in the open elements and ignore them as a scientific resource completely. It's better to reach a goal for creating a working relationship with these companies and salvage what is reasonable and possible economically. Many commercial fossil collecting companies have striven to partner with various professionals in this science. I really enjoyed the video and hope more like it are offered to the public..

The demand of living elephants ivory just isn't enough, now they have to dig up the ivory from long dead elephants.

What I want to know is how is this guy not showing any suffering from mosquitoes.

if its destructive to the earth, china always has a hand in it😂

Yes it is a shame that so much artifacts are being lost. There must be a way to allow the local people to benifit from the finds while preserving the relics of value.

Let's face it, Vice is not what it used to be, but God damn if this wasn't easily one of the best, unique, and just cool stories they've done in my recent memory. Good work.

Human greed and depravity never ceases to amaze me.

The guy with the mosquito net mask over his face is looking at the reporter from Vice like 🤷‍♂️ what were you thinking ?

Well Mammoths will become extinct again from poaching if they are ever brought back...

I'm completely speechless on what's going on here. This raw footage of what this journalist is showing, is yet so important but people aren't aware of...

I cant believe the vice guy went inside that tunnel Haha that thing is ready to collapse. Thats how they clean out the huge freezers in processing plants.. The cameraman well he always survives

I'm waiting for the Mammoth clone

Original, concerning and splendidly filmed. Whoa those tusks!

this, to me, is a good enough reason not to "bring back" the wooly mammoth; they would just be poached into extinction.