HONG KONG — Officials in Hong Kong said on Friday that they had intercepted a shipment of nine tons of scales from pangolins, the largest seizure the city has ever made of products from one of the most frequently trafficked mammals in the world. A thousand elephant tusks were in the same shipment, officials said.

The scales and tusks were seized on Jan. 16, said the customs authorities, who displayed the contraband for reporters. They were found hidden under slabs of frozen meat on a cargo ship that had stopped in Hong Kong on its way to Vietnam from Nigeria, said officials, who estimated the shipment’s value at nearly $8 million.

The pangolin is an anteater-like creature covered in large scales. There are lucrative black markets for it in China and Vietnam, where its scales are pulverized for use in traditional Chinese medicine and its meat is served in restaurants as a delicacy. Hong Kong officials estimated that the intercepted scales had come from nearly 14,000 pangolins.