Despite the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) ban on ivory, poaching associated with its illegal trade has not prevented the suffering of elephants and is estimated to cause an 8% loss in the world's elephant population every year. The 2016 African Elephant Database survey estimated a total of 410,000 elephants remaining in Africa, a decrease of approximately 90,000 elephants from the previous 2013 report.

While trading/procuring elephant ivory is illegal, it is not illegal to sell ivory from extinct species, such as preserved mammoth tusk ivory. This legal source of ivory is now part of an increasing and lucrative "mammoth hunter" industry. It also poses a time-consuming and enforcement problem for customs teams, as ivory from these two different types of tusk are broadly similar making it difficult to distinguish from one another, especially once specimens have become worked or carved.

In this new study, scientists from Bristol's School of Anatomy and Lancaster Medical School sought to establish whether Raman spectroscopy, which is already used in the study of bone and mineral chemistry, could be modified to accurately detect differences in the chemistry of mammoth and elephant ivory. The non-destructive technology, which involves shining a high-energy light at an ivory specimen, can detect small biochemical differences in the tusks from elephants and mammoths.

Researchers scanned samples of mammoth and elephant tusks from London's Natural History Museum using the laser based method, Raman spectroscopy. Results from the experiment found the technology provided accurate, quick and non-destructive species identification.