Chinese ivory ban stokes woolly mammoth tusk 'gold rush' in Siberia

Valery Krivoshapkin was counting time in a motorboat on a river in the Russian Arctic when another scuba diver tossed in the tusk of a woolly mammoth that lived at least 10,000 years ago.

After a month of searching in a remote corner of the vast northern republic of Yakutia, Mr Krivoshapkin's six-man “brigade” had retrieved only mammoth teeth, a rib and part of a jaw, just enough to put them on the scent of a bigger find.

The diving was dangerous, with headlamp visibility less than two feet and the frigid black bottom cluttered by sunken trees. But on this August afternoon, the agonising search had been rewarded with a mammoth tusk that they would go on to sell to Chinese ivory carvers for £8,000....

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