We present a photometric analysis of the rich star cluster population in the tidal tails of NGC 6872 .
We find star clusters with ages between 1 - 100 Myr distributed in the tidal tails , while the tails themselves have an age of less than 150 Myr .
Most of the young massive ( 10 ^ { 4 } \leq M / M _ { \odot } \leq 10 ^ { 7 } ) clusters are found in the outer regions of the galactic disk or the tidal tails .
The mass distribution of the cluster population can be well described by a power-law of the form N ( m ) \propto m ^ { - \alpha } , where \alpha = 1.85 \pm 0.11 , in very good agreement with other young cluster populations found in a variety of different environments .
We estimate the star formation rate for three separate regions of the galaxy , and find that the eastern tail is forming stars at \sim 2 times the rate of the western tail and \sim 5 times the rate of the main body of the galaxy .
By comparing our observations with published N-body models of the fate of material in tidal tails in a galaxy cluster potential , we see that many of these young clusters will be lost into the intergalactic medium .
We speculate that this mechanism may also be at work in larger galaxy clusters such as Fornax , and suggest that the so-called ultra-compact dwarf galaxies could be the most massive star clusters that have formed in the tidal tails of an ancient galactic merger .