… and begins to make its way towards the U.S.

“Look! There’s a real mammoth! And a cave bear! I didn’t expect to meet these fellows at a jewelry and gem show. Unbelievable! Can I take a picture with my new friends?” – a world-known mineralogist was happy like a child when the permission was granted, and his friend took a picture of him with real-looking animals from the ice age.

Oksana Shidlovskaya, the representative of Russia’s National Alliance of Fyodor Shidlovskiy, who is also the wife of the company’s owner, has gotten used to such requests of visitors at the Gem & Jewelry Show at the Tucson Expo Center. She is also accustomed to correcting these people that they are taking pictures not with dinosaurs, but with mammoths. Quite surprisingly, it is not only possible to look at the ancient animals and touch them, but also to purchase them for personal collections. The most expensive beast, a well-preserved skeleton of a mammoth, costs one million dollars. The cheapest creature is the cave bear that can be bought for only twenty thousand. The artifacts are in demand. Mammoth tusks, as well as smaller decorative items made of mammoth bone, also enjoy high popularity.

The exhibit of Russia’s one-of-a-kind Ice Age Museum Theatre came to Tuscon from Moscow. Ice Age Museum was opened to the public in November 2004, but had long been a dream of Fyodor Shidlovskiy, the museum’s founder. An engineer, Fyodor worked for a local airline in northeastern Yakutia in the late 1980s in the small old town of Srednekolymsk on the Kolyma River. He loved that wild country and was fond of hunting and traveling along the local rivers and through the taiga. Fyodor knew that this region was rich with fossils and had heard about the famous Beryozovka mammoth carcass found not far from Srednekolymsk. Once, in a steep bluff at the Beryozovka River, he found a large limb bone and a tusk of a mammoth. That event changed Shidlovskiy’s life. Collecting fossils of extinct Pleistocene animals became his hobby and then a favorite business. By 1994, Shidlovskiy’s collection contained so many interesting fossils that he received proposals to organize a mobile exhibition of ice age animals in Europe. At that time Fyodor was already taken with a new idea to create a museum of the mammoth fauna in Yakutsk or in Moscow. It would have had to be not just a paleontological museum of a strictly academic interest, but a living ancient world, in which serious scientific artifacts and valuable fossils would be presented in a simple, intelligible, and evocative way.

To materialize his plan, Fyodor sought contacts with government officials, and wrote to various business associations. Extensive collections of fossils allowed the creation of composite skeletons and, later, the stuffed bodies of extinct animals for sale. Successful deals at the start of this business allowed research teams to collecte additional fossils in Siberia. The best and most interesting specimens were stored for the future museum. In 1993, when Fyodor moved to Moscow, he had taken a serious interest in the art of bone carving. Handicrafts made of mammoth ivory fascinated Shidlovskiy. He invited the best Russian masters in this folk art to work for his company and accumulated a large collection representing all modern schools of bone carving in Russia.

By 2004, when Shidlovskiy’s company had already become widely known abroad, the attention of Moscow authorities was the only thing still needed for the realization of the museum-theatre project. The government of Yakutia asked Shidlovskiy’s company to represent the region at the International Tourist Exhibition in Moscow. The full-sized stuffed body of an adult mammoth with genuine tusks was among the many interesting exhibits in the Yakutia republic section. It attracted the attention of Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow. Fyodor Shidlovskiy described all his plans to the mayor and his aides. Very soon the new private museum was opened in Building no. 71 of the All-Russia Exhibition Center.

Today, Ice Age Museum Theatre is the largest private paleontological collection in Russia. The permanent collection takes up close to eleven thousand square feet of space. An ice age landscape, as well as a number of other themed exhibits, such as the dwelling of a cave man, surprise the visitors. The museum has the largest collection of rhinoceros tichorhinus skulls and horns. There are also skeletons of ancient buffalos and cave bears. One can find in the museum the fur of real mammoths, ancient bison skins, and a number of artifacts made from mammoth ivory. High guests of honor and internationally-renowned scientists frequently visit the museum. Researchers are able to study the museum’s unique artifacts with relatively minor restrictions. The museum has a special team for organizing regular exploratory and scientific expeditions to Yakut rivers, where mammoths lived thousands of years ago.

Contact information:

Ice Age Museum

Moscow

Building 71, All-Russia Exhibition Center

Tel./Fax: (495) 975-0913

E-mail: mammoth@iceage.ru

www.iceage.ru

It is possible to submit business ideas for cooperating with the Ice Age Museum.