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14C Bomb Peak Analysis of African Elephant Tusks and its Relation to Cites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2019

Eva M Wild ,
Walter Kutschera ,
Annemarie Meran  and
Peter Steier
Eva M Wild*
Affiliation:
University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Isotope Research and Nuclear Physics, Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator, Währinger Strasse 17, AT-1090 Vienna, Austria
Walter Kutschera
Affiliation:
University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Isotope Research and Nuclear Physics, Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator, Währinger Strasse 17, AT-1090 Vienna, Austria
Annemarie Meran
Affiliation:
Klachau 18, A-8982 Bad Mitterndorf, Austria
Peter Steier
Affiliation:
University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Isotope Research and Nuclear Physics, Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator, Währinger Strasse 17, AT-1090 Vienna, Austria
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

We report on a case study of radiocarbon (14C) measurements applied to three pairs of tusks from African elephants, which were supposedly hunted in the 1960s in Tanzania and/or Kenya. The 14C results of 1.40 to 1.60 F14C fall into 14C bomb peak values between 1960 and 1975, thus confirming the suspected hunting time. Since the trading of ivory from African elephants killed after 1989 was banned by the international CITES convention, the investigated tusks are not affected by this ban.

Keywords

14C bomb peak datingCITESelephant tuskivory
Type
Conference Paper
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 61 , Issue 5: Radiocarbon 2018 Conference Proceedings Trondheim, Norway, June 17–22, 2018 Part 1 of 2 , October 2019 , pp. 1619 - 1624
Copyright
© 2019 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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Footnotes

Selected Papers from the 23rd International Radiocarbon Conference, Trondheim, Norway, 17–22 June, 2018

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