A Cold War fossil?

"Mesozoic Coleoptera" is a tour de force by the fabulous four Arnoldi, Zherikhin, Nikritin and Ponomarenko. It was originally published in Moscow back in 1977. This American (or is it Amerikan) edition is from 1991. It was published as part of a program to translate important foreign-language reference works.

The Palaeontological Institute at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow have a collection of over 15,000 fossil beetles from the Mesozoic, apparently a difficult period in beetle evolution to sort out. This book is therefore a God-send to all palaeontologists specializing in beetles rather than dinosaurs - and, as we know, God loves beetles! (Dinosaurs were something else again.) "Mesozoic Coleoptera" even contains black-and-white photos of the fossils. Not all 15,000, though!

I'm not entirely sure how to rate this Cold War fossil, but I suppose four stars for the effort would be just fine.