[NHCOLL-L:4654] looking for Becker collections

[Adrain, Tiffany S]

Happy New Year everyone,

I recently received an enquiry from a very nice elderly gentleman who has some fossils he collected under the guidance of one A. G. "Gus" Becker of Clermont, Iowa. Apparently Mr Becker and his father F. Becker were quite well-known Iowa fossil collectors in the first half of the 20th century (Gus died in 1951, his father in 1924). A local newspaper of the time describes the Becker collection as "one of the largest and most beautiful collections in the country", and including the holotype of Bumastus beckeri, among others, a trilobite described by Slocom, 1916 (now in the Field Museum). We have a few specimens of Gus Becker's in the UI Paleontology Repository and will be including Becker in a new project on the history of the collections and the stories of our collectors. Does anyone else have any Becker collections?

Tiffany

Tiffany Adrain
Collections Manager
Paleontology Repository
Department of Geoscience
The University of Iowa
121 Trowbridge Hall
Iowa City, IA 52242

phone: 319 335 1822
fax: 319 335 1821
website: http://www.uiowa.edu/~geology/paleo

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