After being incarcerated in permafrost for thousands of years, global warming has seen woolly mammoths being taken from the ground as demand for ivory fuels a legal trade in the remains of the extinct species.

But concerns have been raised that the booming market for mammoth tusks could have a devastating effect on their modern-day cousins – African elephants.

Experts say about 10 million of the ancient creatures lie encased in the Arctic tundra, and the melting of the ice cap has seen about 60 tonnes of mammoth tusks a year being exported out of Siberia, with almost all of it ending up in China.

China has for decades been a magnet for poached elephant ivory, but Beijing has pledged to shutdown the trade by the end of the year.

The decision was praised as a “game-changer” by animal conservationists, who say between 30-40,000 elephants each year are killed for their tusks.

Around 20 million African elephants existed before European colonisation, decreasing to 1.3 million in 1979, while less than 400,000 are now thought to remain in the wild.

But demand for elephant ivory in the world’s biggest market will never be fully stamped out, campaigners say, if mammoth ivory continues to be traded.