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Othniel Charles Marsh & Edward Drinker Cope.
Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope: From friends to enemies
The participants in this unusual conflict came from very different backgrounds and had many differences. Othniel Charles Marsh was born on October 29, 1831, near Lockport, New York. He was the third child of Mary Gaines Peabody and Caleb Marsh, who were struggling with poverty. As a child, he began to show an interest in fossils and extinct species, influenced by the discovery of fossils during the expansion of the Erie Canal. Growing up, Othniel was unsure what career path he wanted to take, and his choices were limited by his family’s financial problems.
The uncertain fate of the young man was changed by his uncle George Peabody, a financier and philanthropist, who financed his education at Phillips Academy. After graduation, Marsh enrolled at Yale, where he became deeply interested in vertebrate paleontology and published the first scientific papers on the minerals and fossils he discovered in Nova Scotia. Marsh turned down an offer of a professorship at Yale University and traveled around Europe, where he attended lectures and met eminent specialists in his field of science.
In 1863, while at the University of Berlin, Marsh met another American, Edward Drinker Cope, who was also on a scientific tour of Europe. Cope was born on July 28, 1840. He was the son of wealthy Quakers Alfred and Hannah Cope. He had a family reputation as a child prodigy with a talent for learning. This did not please his father, who would have preferred his son to follow the family tradition of farming. Edward intended to go his own way, which led him to the Academy of Natural Sciences, where he worked part-time cataloging specimens. In January 1859, Cope, barely 19, published his first scientific paper on the research he was developing. Alfred finally realized that there was no way he could have kept his son on the farm and decided to pay for his tuition at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as tutoring in German and French. Armed with a solid educational background, Cope became a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, which opened the way to publish the results of his research.
Cope set off on a journey through European universities and museums at a similar time to Marsh. The scientists quickly took a liking to each other. They were united by their passion and the fact that they had avoided participation in the U.S. Civil War. Their backgrounds and scientific achievements were different – Cope had no formal education and therefore no academic title. He would have been a paltry figure compared to his older colleague, except that the 25-year-old Cope already had 37 scientific papers to his name, while Marsh had only two. Cope was a violent and unpredictable man. Marsh was calmer and more thoughtful. However, both were equally quarrelsome and stubborn. The Americans spent several days together in Berlin, and after leaving the city, they exchanged letters, sent each other photos, and even found fossils.
The Bone Wars: Elasmosaurus and discoveries in Black Hills
At first, there was no indication that this friendship would turn into a deadly rivalry. After returning from Europe, Marsh convinced his wealthy uncle to fund the Peabody Museum of Natural History, of which he became director. Meanwhile, Cope became a professor of zoology at Haverford College. That all changed when the two scientists met at a dig in New Jersey, where some of the first dinosaur fossils in the United States were discovered. After the official dig was over, Marsh, using the fortune his deceased uncle left him, bribed workers at the marl pits to send him all the fossils they found. Soon the friends began to attack each other in publications, but it was Marsh who dealt the critical blow. He announced that Cope’s reconstruction of the skeleton of Elasmosaurus (a genus of plesiosaurus, a marine dinosaur) had one significant flaw. The head had been placed where the tail should have been and… he was right. Thus began a fierce and not always fair competition over which paleontologist would discover more new prehistoric species and put the other to shame.
Humiliated, Cope responded by conducting excavations in Kansas and Wyoming, which Marsh considered his territory. Any pretense of camaraderie and professionalism disappeared by 1873. The western United States was of great interest to paleontologists at that time, with reports of numerous finds coming from there. Marsh and Cope also discovered many fossils, but not all could be counted as “new.” Many of the fossils were previously discovered specimens that had to be properly identified and classified. In this field, Marsh was the clear leader, who placed many completely unique species of mammals in a new order of mammals, which he called Cinocerea. Outclassed in the field of excavations, Cope decided to take the fight to the arena of nomenclature and proposed his own classification of mammals, which of course rejected his rival’s proposal.
Marsh had no intention of accepting Cope’s classification and once again took the fight to the excavations. He saw the opportunity for discovery in the Dakota Territory in the Black Hills, where gold had been discovered, which for a paleontologist meant a great chance of accidental finds. However, the tense relations between the government and the Native Americans living in the area proved to be a serious problem. Marsh, however, was determined to get involved in the conflict. He reached an agreement with Red Cloud, the chief of Oglala Lakota, to whom he promised that in return for permission to excavate, he would share with him the profit from the sale of fossils and support the Native American cause in Washington. Marsh obtained many valuable finds. He also fulfilled his part of the agreement and after the excavations were completed in 1875, he represented the Oglala Lakota and Red Cloud’s cause to the Interior Department and President Ulysses S. Grant.
Como Bluff: Final showdown of the Bone Wars
Marsh’s financial independence gave him a significant advantage over his rival. He could dig wherever and whenever he wanted. He also spared no penny for people who were the first to inform him about new discoveries. This is exactly what happened in 1877 in Wyoming, where during a hike on the Como Bluff ridge, Arthur Lakes, a teacher, noticed giant bones embedded in the rock. The discoverer reported the find to Marsh, who additionally paid him to keep it a secret. The excavations at Como Bluff turned out to be very successful for Marsh. In the December issue of the American Journal of Science, the scientist described, classified and named dinosaurs known to everyone today, such as: Stegosaurus, Allosaurus and Apatosaurus.
Such huge finds could not be kept a secret and eventually Cope also got his chance to discover. A real war broke out between teams of rival paleontologists. Bribery, espionage and theft were commonplace. There were also fights and throwing rocks at each other. Cope and Marsh were so eager to defeat their opponent that they would cover up explored areas to prevent their opponent from exploring them. Less significant or damaged fossils were destroyed just to prevent them from falling into the hands of their rival.
The excavations, carried out on a massive scale and without restraint, led to financial ruin for the rivals. The scientific world, tired of their spite and mockery damaging the reputation of American paleontology, turned its back on them. However, neither money nor the scientific community stopped Marsh and Cope from continuing their rivalry, which only ended with Cope’s death in 1897. Even in the face of death, Cope decided to finally prove that he was better than Marsh, so he had his brain preserved and weighed in the hope that it would be larger than his rival’s. Surprisingly, Marsh did not accept the challenge. He died two years later.
Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope left behind a huge scientific legacy. Although their hostile rivalry was senseless, it was also effective. Paleontologists discovered a total of 136 new species of dinosaurs including: Triceratops, Diplodocus, Camarasaurus and Coelophysis, 80 of which belong to Marsh. From the point of view of numbers, Marsh won the competition, but the contribution to the development and popularization of paleontology of both scientists is difficult to overestimate.
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References
· Caparas G., The Bone Wars: How a Bitter Rivalry Gave the Spotlight to Paleontology, “Modern Sciences”, https://modernsciences.org/the-bone-wars-how-a-bitter-rivalry-gave-the-spotlight-to-paleontology/.
· Colbert E. H., The Great Dinosaur Hunters and Their Discoveries, Dover Publications, Mineola 1984.
· Jaffe M., The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War Between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science: Three Rivers Press, New York 2000.
· Penick J., Professor Cope vs. Professor Marsh, “American Heritage” 22 (5), 2010.
· Shor E., The Fossil Feud Between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh: Exposition Press, Detroit 1974.
· Switek B., The Bone Wars: how a bitter rivalry drove progress in palaeontology, “Science Focus’, https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/the-bone-wars-how-a-bitter-rivalry-drove-progress-in-palaeontology.
· Wallace D.R., The Bonehunters’ Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age, Houghton Mifflin Books, Boston 1999.
· Wilford, J. N., The Fossil Wars, “New York Times”, 1999, November 7.