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.