♪ MUSIC ♪ NARRATOR: In October 1909 Erwin Barbour, the Director of the Nebraska State Museum, received a call from Mrs. Jennie Kimmel who lived in Lincoln.

(PHONE RING) NARRATOR: Workers had nearly completed excavating Kimmel's cellar for a furnace when they made a startling discovery- fossilized bones of immense size.

Professor Barbour and his sister Carrie, assistant curator at the State Museum, went to investigate.

They soon unearthed a shoulder blade, multiple ribs and vertebrae, and a very long tusk.

The Barbours determined that the skeleton of a mammoth, more than 10,000 years old, lay under the porch and front lawn of the house.

In the coming months Carrie Barbour prepared the tusk for exhibition in the museum, restoring the missing portion with plaster-a common practice in museum at the turn of the century.

It is still on display today.

Erwin Barbour is considered the Father of Paleontology in Nebraska, but his sister, Carrie, who was a fossil hunter in her own right, has often been overlooked.

♪ MUSIC ♪ Carrie was born in Springfield Township, Indiana, in 1861.

As a child she collected plant specimens for her mother's herbarium and made sketches of flora and fauna in the nearby woodland.

♪ MUSIC ♪ Encouraged to follow traditional professional pathways, in college Carrie studied the fine arts while Erwin studied the sciences.

But Carrie would soon defy tradition to pursue her early childhood passion.

♪ MUSIC ♪ After becoming involved with her brother's research at the Nebraska State Museum, she assumed the role of assistant curator of paleontology.

CARRIE HERBEL: She was probably one of the first women paleontologists in North America.

She was instrumental in trying to get things set up for the museum by developing little displays, preparing specimens that later went on exhibit, and some are still on exhibit today.

♪ MUSIC ♪ NARRATOR: Carrie did much more than clean and prepare fossils in the museum laboratory.

She also participated in multiple field expeditions to western Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.

In the summer of 1899, Carrie and a field assistant collected more than 20,000 samples of fossil species including crinoids, brachiopods, and corals.

Several of these fossils were new discoveries.

CARRIE HERBEL: When people look at fossils in museums, I don't think they realize all the work it takes to get them to the point where they can be put on exhibit, to where they can be put into a collection drawer for researchers around the world to come study.

I have to give her a lot of kudos because I get to work on fossils with some incredible modern tools that help me do my job.

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Where she in order to get fossils out of the rock she often had to use a hammer and chisel.

♪ MUSIC ♪ CARRIE HERBEL: There is a well known image of Carrie Barbour preparing the femur, a dinosaur femur.

It's super tall, it's probably almost as tall as she was.

Carrie Barbour was a pretty strong woman and considering how small she was she did some big things.

♪ MUSIC ♪ To think that Carrie Barbour was the first woman paleontologist here in Nebraska and then Carrie Herbel is here now and we spell our names the same way.

I kind of thought, "Oh that's kinda cool."

♪ MUSIC ♪ "It kind of made me feel some connection."

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