The fossil collections of Sir Thomas Franklin Sibly (1883-1948), geologist and gifted administrator

National Museum Wales in Cardiff houses a collection of approximately 560 fossils from the Carboniferous Limestone collected by Sir Thomas Franklin Sibly during a five-year period when he was Professor of Geology at University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff. Throughout his career as a geologist, Sibly authored and co-authored almost a dozen publications on the Carboniferous geology of the Mendips, the Forest of Dean and South Wales. He worked with and learned from geologists such as Arthur Vaughan (1868-1915) and Charles Lapworth (1842-1920), and himself influenced the research choices of eminent geologists such as Frank Dixey (1892-1982), Arthur Trueman (1894-1956) and Thomas Neville George (1904-1980). Sibly later became a university administrator but retained a professional interest in geology and continued some of his research. He donated rocks and fossils to various British museums and universities although it seems that only a fraction of these survives to this day.