Her creation of 30,860 index cards for Cenozoic molluscs has become invaluable to the field of Atlantic and Gulf Coast Plains fossils studies.
She collated the Museum's vast collection and created a reference file of index cards for thousands of Cenozoic molluscs,[4] an endeavour that proved invaluable to field researchers who could quickly ascertain if their discoveries had already been described before across the numerous journals of the discipline.
[6] Bedette received the Geological Survey's Scroll of Honor, and the Natural History Museum's Peer Recognition Community Award.
[7] Following her retirement from the Geological Survey, Bedette continued to work at the Natural History Museum, where she compiled descriptions of over 7000 fossils and living scallops.
They established a small business, Butterfly Alphabet, Inc.[8][9] The photographs Sandved took were later published in the Smithsonian Magazine in 1975,[10] Barbara Bedette died of acute leukemia on February 23, 2006.