Fabulous
new fossil collection from Russia:
Mammoths
and Woolly Rhinos.
The best we've ever
seen!
Friday
April 22, I was privileged to be asked to appraise and enjoy a
wonderful
collection of Russian mammoth fossils and best of all, the folks who
found and
brought them to the United Sates, their new permanent home in Waco,
Texas.
These Russian paleontologists are
featured in the current issue of National Geographic
April 2005. Fyodor Shidlovskiy is the chief fossil collector in Russia,
appointed
by the Academy of Sciences. He has gone to great lengths to collect and
recover
fantastic fossils from the frozen tundra of Siberia and is renowned and
loved
among the local people who live in very remote places. He pays them
good money
for Mammoth remains, Woolly Rhinoceros and much more. These specimens
would
never be collected otherwise. He is a boon to these people and to
science.
Accompanying Feordore was his lovely
wife and daughter as well as his equally
lovely and very intelligent interpreter, Jeania. Also Pavel the chief
paleontologist
from his museum in Moscow was there, a very knowledgeable man. Vladimir is a big tough looking guy, but
he's the gentle soul who, when he is not restoring and mounting
Fyodor's finds,
is playing guitar and cooking.
The Pardo collection is acquiring
these specimens with the intention to open a
museum on the "Ice Age." What I saw Friday will rival many
major museums. A complete big Priscus Bison with Horns, next to a
complete male
Woolly Mammoth, next to a complete Woolly Rhinoceros facing a huge bull
Mammoth
skull with amazing tusks next to the skull of a baby mammoth. But the
artistry displayed
between these real fossils, was a fleshed out Woolly Mammoth with hair
that was
so believable that it is hard to imagine it is not the actual animal. The Woolly Rhino is just as believable as is
the baby mammoth. One hundred and twenty five yak hides were used to
make the
mounts. Yaks have several kinds of hair and they were so expertly
placed on
these mounts that I can say, I have never seen anything anywhere to top
it.
