Herbert D. Athearn and the Museum of Fluviatile Mollusks

Herbert D. Athearn (1923–2011) was an avid student of freshwater mollusks. He named his private shell collection “The Museum of Fluviatile Mollusks”, which was meticulously organized at his residence. This collection was curated to current museum standards with detailed labels, all lots with catalog numbers, and all unionoid valves with catalog numbers written in India ink. Specimens’ collecting dates span between 1850 and 2005, with 23,344 cataloged lots containing over 3000 lots of imperiled and extinct taxa. All data for each of the lots are handwritten in paper catalogs. Many lots contain growth series from the smallest juveniles to the largest specimens seen. He traded extensively with collectors worldwide, obtaining specimens from 84 countries. This collection was donated to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in 2007. To date, 64 percent of this collection has been databased using a relational database, totaling 589,995 specimens. The collection consists of bivalves, primarily Unionidae, Margaritiferidae, and Sphaeriidae, as well as gastropods. There are 73 families represented, with the greatest abundance found in freshwater Pleuroceridae. The Athearn collection donation included his correspondence, his library, field notes, and USGS topographic maps with marked field localities.