> [citation needed]
Ebin reference xddddd.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/wildlife-woolly-m...
You misunderstand the situation. Poachers would kill elephants for ivory, pass it off as mammoth ivory for import reasons and then sold it as ivory again.
No, in general, you don't need a lab to tell them apart when they're in the raw state. Fossil ivory is pretty distinctive in appearance.
You could maybe stain modern ivory to make it look like fossil ivory, but that would make it considerably less valuable.
And yeah, you could label the containers of modern ivory as fossil ivory, but you could also label them as medical supplies, soybeans, or wingnuts. It isn't going to fool anyone who actually opens the container.
How many exampes of both have you seen, in person?
I won't dispute that fossil ivory could possibly be bleached to look like modern ivory (which would have no effect on the elephants or arguably a positive effect, since it would be eating some of the market for the modern stuff), or that modern ivory could be stained to look like fossil ivory (which would devalue it).
I just don't see any economic incentive to do either one.
No, it isn't.
https://www.fws.gov/lab/ivory_natural.php
"as a result sales of mammoth ivory can act as a cover for sales of illegal elephant ivory."
[citation needed]
What would be the economic incentive for selling the (breathtakingly expensive) elephant ivory as the (much cheaper, though still expensive) fossil ivory?