Bone Wars

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Edward Drinker Cope (left) and Othniel Charles Marsh's rivalry helped spark the Bone Wars.
Edward Drinker Cope (left) and Othniel Charles Marsh's rivalry helped spark the Bone Wars.

The Bone Wars is the name given to a period of intense fossil speculation and discovery in the American Midwest during the Gilded Age, fueled by a heated rivalry between paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. The bulk of the fossil collecting lasted for ten years and centered on the excavation of fossils at Como Bluff, Wyoming. Both scientists used underhanded methods to out-compete the other, sometimes resorting to bribery and destruction of bones.

Both Cope and Marsh were financially ruined by their efforts to disgrace each other, but their contributions to science and the field of paleontology were great; scientists are still cataloguing Cope and Marsh's finds. The bitter feud between the two men led to over 142 new species of dinosaurs being discovered, and 1,818 species or genera of fossil vertebrates described between them.

Not only did the products of the Bone Wars result in an increase in knowledge of ancient life, but the public's interest in dinosaurs was sparked and led to continued fossil excavation in North America in the decades to come. In recent decades the Bone Wars have been depicted in several books and a board game.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Background

At one time, Cope and Marsh were friends; they named species after each other. Over time, however, their relations soured, due in part to their temperaments. Cope was known to be pugnacious and possessed a quick temper; Marsh was slower and more methodical, but despite his powerful friends was introverted. In 1870, Marsh had humiliated Cope by pointing out his reconstruction of Elasmosaurus was flawed, with the head placed where the tail should have been. Cope, in turn, began collecting in what Marsh considered his private bone-hunting turf in the Bridger Basin of southwestern Wyoming. By 1872, any pretense of cordiality ended and open hostility ensued.[1] The two began attacking each other in papers and publications.

The Bone Wars were triggered by the 1858 discovery of the holotype specimen of Hadrosaurus foulkii by William Parker Foulke in the marl pits of Haddonfield, New Jersey. It was the first nearly-complete skeleton of a dinosaur ever found, and sparked great interest in the new field of paleontology. The skeleton was sent to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where it was named and described in 1858 by Joseph Leidy, who was perhaps the leading paleontologist of the time.

[edit] New Jersey

Edward Drinker Cope worked for Leidy, and soon was working in the marl pits of southwest New Jersey. Together they made a number of discoveries, including the second almost-complete skeleton of a dinosaur, a carnivorous Laelaps aquilunguis, in 1866. The skeleton contained a hind leg, a portion of a jaw and what Cope described as "a cross between the talon of an eagle and the claw of a lion." From the skeleton, it was determined that the dinosaur was a two-legged carnivore about 20 feet (6.10 metres) in length.[2] The two made arrangements for the companies digging up the marl, which was being used as a fertilizer, to contact them whenever any fossilized bones were unearthed. Cope moved to Haddonfield with his wife and baby daughter to be near the discoveries, and soon rivaled his mentor in fame.

At the time, Marsh was a professor at Yale University (which was still called Yale College), in New Haven, Connecticut, studying fossilized dinosaur tracks in the Connecticut Valley. As the first American professor of paleontology, the discoveries in New Jersey were of intense interest. He visited Cope, whom he knew from the University of Berlin, and was given a tour of the discovery sites. Together they unearthed some new partial skeletons, but the rivalry started soon after when Cope learned that Marsh had secretly returned and bribed the marl company managers to report any new finds directly to him.

[edit] Como Bluff and the West

In 1870, the attention shifted west, and in 1877, specifically to the Morrison Formation in Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, which during the Jurassic was on the shore of a great sea. Since both were wealthy — Cope was the scion of a wealthy Quaker family, and Marsh was the nephew of George Peabody, for whom Yale's museum is named — they used their own personal wealth to fund expeditions each summer, and then spent the winter publishing their discoveries. Small armies of fossil hunters in mule-drawn wagons were soon sending quite literally tons of fossils back East.

But their discoveries were accompanied by sensational accusations of spying, stealing workers, stealing fossils, and bribery. Among other things Cope repeatedly accused Marsh of stealing fossils, and was so angry that he stole a train full of Marsh's fossils, and had it sent to Philadelphia. Marsh, in turn, was so determined that he stole skulls from American Indian burial platforms and violated treaties by trespassing on their land. He was also so protective of his fossil sites that he even used dynamite on one to prevent it from falling into Cope's hands.

They also tried to ruin each other's professional credibility. When Cope made a error and attached the head of an Elasmosaurus to the wrong end of the animal (the tail, instead of the neck), he tried to cover up his mistake. He even went so far as to purchase every copy he could find of the journal it was published in; but Marsh, who pointed out the error in the first place, made sure to publicize the story. Marsh was no more infallible, however. He made a similar error, and put the wrong head on the skeleton of an Apatosaurus (at that time known as Brontosaurus). But his error was not discovered for more than a hundred years. In 1981, the Peabody Museum of Natural History finally acknowledged the mistake, and exhibits around the world had to be redone.

[edit] Legacy

By most standards, Marsh won the Bone Wars. Both made finds of incredible scientific value, but while Marsh discovered a total of 86 new species, due in part to his discovery of the Como Bluff site, near Medicine Bow, Wyoming (one of the richest sources of fossils known), Cope only discovered 56. Many of the fossils Cope unearthed were of species that had already been named, or were of uncertain identification. While the dinosaurs Marsh discovered include household names, such as Triceratops, Allosaurus, Diplodocus, and Stegosaurus, even Cope's most famous discoveries, synapsids and dinosaurs such as Dimetrodon, Camarasaurus, Coelophysis, and Monoclonius were more obscure. But their cumulative discoveries defined the field of paleontology; at the start of the Bone Wars, there were only nine named species of dinosaur in North America; after the Bone Wars, there were around 150 species. Furthermore, some of their ideas -- such as Marsh's argument that birds are descended from dinosaurs -- have been upheld; while others -- such as "Cope's law", which states that over time species tend to get larger -- is viewed as having little to no scientific merit.

Their rivalry lasted until Cope's death in 1897, but by that time they had both run out of money. Marsh got Cope's federal funding cut off (including his funding from the U.S. Geological Survey), and Cope had to sell part of his collection. Marsh in turn had to mortgage his home, and ask Yale for a salary to live on. Cope nonetheless issued a final challenge at his death; he had his skull donated to science so that his brain could be measured, hoping that his brain would be larger than that of his adversary; at the time, it was thought brain size was the true measure of intelligence. Marsh never rose to the challenge, but Cope's skull is still preserved.

While their collective discoveries helped define the budding new field of study, the race also had some negative effects. Their animosity and public behavior harmed the reputation of American paleontology in Europe for decades. Furthermore, the use of dynamite and sabotage by employees of both men destroyed hundreds of potentially critical fossil remains. It will never be known how much their rivalry has damaged our understanding of life forms in the regions which they worked. Joseph Leidy abandoned his own more methodical excavations in the west, finding he could not keep up with Cope and Marsh's reckless search for bones.[3]

There have been books written about the Bone Wars. Two notable examples are The Gilded Dinosaur: the Fossil War Between E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science by Mark Jaffe and The Bonehunters' Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age by David Rains Wallace.

Recently the Bone Wars has been the subject of a graphic novel, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards, by Joe Ottoviani. It is not quite true to fact; the events have been re-ordered so that the story reads more like a TV script. There is also a card game, "Bone Wars: The Game of Ruthless Paleontology", by James L. Cambias and Diane Kelly. The Bone Wars was also featured, in more fantastical form, in the book Bone Wars by Brett Davis, which includes aliens also interested in the bones.[4]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Wilford, 87.
  2. ^ Jaffe, 10.
  3. ^ Academy of Natural Sciences.
  4. ^ Waggoner.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Dinosaurs Portal