coal balls. The majority of these were sent to the Botan- 
ical Museum at Harvard, but large numbers were given 
to other institutions, in particular to Washington Uni- 
versity in St. Louis. 
Among Fred Thompson's collections of fossil plants, 
four species, new to the Carboniferous flora, perpetuate 
his name in the paleontological literature. In addition, 
he made available for study a large number of other new 
species of fossil plants, which have added measurably to 
our knowledge of the structure and evolution of Carbon- 
iferous plant life. Indeed, many reterences to ‘‘Collected 
by Frederick Oliver ‘Thompson’ may be seen in paleo- 
botanical publications in the United States since 1988. 
Although his field of special interest was paleobotany, 
noteworthy contributions were also made to invertebrate 
paleontology: and, to aid studies in this field, a superb 
collection of modern Floridian sea shells was donated to 
the State University of Lowa. He also collected many 
fossil marine invertebrates from the Pennsylvanian strata 
of central Lowa and especially from the Upper Devonian 
deposits of the northeastern part of the state. In this 
work, as so often when in the field, he was accompanied 
and ably assisted by his wife, Anna. His collections of 
invertebrate fossils, as in the case of plants, were invaria- 
bly made available to specialists. Some of the specimens 
of Lowa’s Paleozoic faunas he even sent to places as re- 
mote as Canterbury University College in New Zealand, 
where they have been used by paleontologists for pur- 
poses of Comparison. 
Once, while Fred was splitting fossiliferous nodules 
near Mazon Creek, [linois, a boulder of Joliet dolomite, 
which he was using for an anvil, fractured and a striking 
trilobite pygidium was exposed. It became the holotype 
of Aretinurus thompsont Miller and Unklesbay, named 
in honor of its discoverer. Had it not been for his innate 
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