Carrie Adeline Barbour

Carrie Adeline Barbour (October 1, 1861 – June 9, 1942) was an American paleontologist and educator. As an assistant curator of paleontology at the University of Nebraska State Museum and an Assistant Professor of Paleontology, Barbour was among the earliest women paleontologists in the United States.

Early life One of Adeline (Hinkley) and Samuel Williamson Barbour's five children, Carrie Adeline Barbour was born in Springfield, Posey County, Indiana, on October 1, 1861, five years after her brother, Erwin H. Barbour.

Career After college, Barbour taught wood carving and china painting at Iowa College in Grinnell, Iowa. She may have been the first woman employed and paid as a paleontologist in the United States

Barbour participated in the fieldwork. However, she excelled at preparing both vertebrate and invertebrate fossils back at the museum.

Barbour was among the six members of the sixth annual Morrill Geological Expedition in 1897, coordinated by the University of Nebraska and the Nebraska Geological Survey. That year, the expedition focused on sites in South Dakota, western Nebraska, and Wyoming and included work in Nebraska's Daemonelix beds, the Bad Lands, and the Black Hills regions. During the 1899 Morrill expedition, she led assistants collecting invertebrate fossils in Carboniferous exposures. Following the expedition, some of the duplicate specimens collected were donated to 40 institutions across the country. She is buried in Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln.

Published works

Barbour, Carrie Adeline. “Some Methods of Collecting, Preserving, and Studying Fossils,” Nebraska Academy of Sciences, December 30, 1896. —“Observations on the Concretions of the Pierre Shale,” Proceedings, 1897-1900. — "Report on the Work of the Morrill Geological Expeditions of the University of Nebraska" (June 1900). Science, New Series, vol. 11, no. 283. (June 1900): 856–858.