Fossilized Ivory Jewelry

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These intricate designs incorporates prehistoric fossilized wooly mammoth ivory or fossil walrus ivory. Now extinct, the mammoth roamed the earth until about 10,000 years ago. Mammoth ivory is found as a consequence of gold mining in Canada, Alaska and Siberia and is found in the layer just above the gold. It can also be found in deposits after a violent winter storm have revealed a portion of the material sticking up out of the permafrost near ancient lake beds. The grain pattern of spirals running clockwise and counter clockwise over one another proves it is pre-Ice Age mammoth ivory. Fossil walrus ivory is found mostly on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska and up and down the coast of mainland Alaska. Most is excavated by Eskimos from their Ancestral village sites and some fossil weathers out of the ground on its own. The color of the ivory varies due to the minerals surrounding the soil. Fossil walrus ivory is between five hundred to ten thousand years old. These fossils are carved and then set with sterling silver and some have gold accents. They are each handcrafted in Bali, Indonesia.