Mammoth tusks seized

Russian authorities have confiscated three tons of tusks from the extinct woolly mammoth after a criminal gang tried to smuggle them out of the country.

A court in St Petersburg said it had confiscated some 64 full and 14 reconstructed tusks. It added that a small group of criminals had been involved in smuggling tusks and bones from the huge beasts across Russia's borders since 2004.

The tusks are from a species of mammoth that once inhabited the Siberian Sakha Republic. They survived for thousands of years in the permafrost that covers vast parts of the region.