Arguably, no two people did
more to advance the early field
of paleontology than Edwin
Drinker Cope and Othniel
Charles Marsh.
Between 1864 and
Cope's death in 1897,
the two men were
locked in a race
to discover and catalog as
many new species of dinosaur
as they possibly could.
Unfortunately their
bitter rivalry
resulted in so many
underhanded dealings
and straight up felonies, that
their reputations were forever
destroyed, and fossil
hunting carried a dark stain
for decades afterward.
Today we're talking
about the strange feud
that created and almost
destroyed paleontology.
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Now grab your pith helmet
and let's get going.
The feud between Cope
and Marsh was so intense,
that the bickering
scientists would routinely
dynamite their own
dig sites to prevent
the other from
potentially combing back
over the excavation and
discovering something.
That's a level of pettiness
so casually destructive,
it's almost admirable.
There's no telling how
many species of dinosaur
have gone undiscovered
thanks to Cope and Marsh's
literally explosive rivalry.
During the early
days of the feud,
Cope incorrectly reconstructed
an Elasmosaurus skeleton,
placing the animal's skull
at the tip of its tail
and believing he had
discovered a new species
of snake-like dinosaur.
Unable to resist the
opportunity to deliver
a backboard-shattering
dunk on his rival,
Marsh called out Cope's
mistake in a letter
to The New York Herald
claiming that he had pointed
the error out to Cope, and that
Cope's wounded vanity had never
recovered from the
crippling blow.
In reality, Cope's
mentor, Joseph Leidy,
had actually
discovered the mistake,
and Cope had
desperately attempted
to buy up and destroy every
scientific journal that
had printed his error
in a stunning display
of the 19th century equivalent
of the "someone hacked
my Twitter" defense.
By the time everything
was said and done,
the Bone Wars did a tremendous
amount of long-term good
for the field of paleontology.
However, at the
time, Marsh and Cope
were so eager to beat each
other in making new discoveries,
that their work was
sloppy and filled
with more errors than a
Little League baseball game.
By the time the excavation
dust settled, Marsh and Cope
claimed to have identified 142
unique species of dinosaur.
Today, less than 40%
of their discoveries
are considered valid.
In fact, Cope is
responsible for the whole
Brontosaurus/Apotasaurus
debate when he mistakenly
identified an Apotasaurus
specimen as a new species.
Ironically, through
no fault of his own,
Cope's brontosaurus SNAFU
was validated in 2015
when researchers
determined that there
were enough significant
differences in Cope's specimen
to classify it as a new species.
When they weren't trolling each
other in scientific journals
and blowing up
their own dig sites,
Cope and Marsh conducted
a great deal of their feud
at a distance, sending hired
agents across the country
to do their dirty work.
The agents, which included
the two paleontologists'
respective students, would
scour dig sites in secret
to try to scoop up
valuable fossils.
Marsh had more money
to burn than Cope,
and would also resort
to flat out bribery
to get the best bones,
although Cope was not
above skullduggery.
You know, like using dynamite.
In a turn of events that might
not exactly come as a surprise,
Cope and Marsh eventually
hired dinosaur rustlers,
which is a charmingly
paleontological term
for armed thugs,
to steal fossils.
Cope kicked things off
by paying a prospector
to steal bones from Marsh's
dig in Como Bluff, Wyoming,
and after that, the thieving
genie was out of the bottle.
The dinosaur rustlers would
spy on rival dig sites,
poach fossils, and even throw
rocks at excavating workers.
Eventually one of
the rustler clashes
nearly broke out in a
full-blown gunfight.
But tempers cooled,
and the Bone Wars
carried on without any
actual shots being fired.
Cope's mentor, Joseph
Leidy, actually
discovered the first dinosaur
in America, the Hadrosaurus,
in Haddonfield,
New Jersey in 1856.
A decade later, Cope joined
the Philadelphia Academy
of Natural Sciences and set
up a fossil-hunting operation
in Haddonfield.
Marsh caught wind of this
and bribe some of the workers
to send any fossils
they discovered
to him rather than
Cope, presumably
while twirling his
considerable facial hair.
An understandably enraged Cope
found out what Marsh was doing,
and part 2 of the
Bone Wars had begun.
Astonishingly, Cope
and Marsh weren't
always at each other's throats.
The two men initially
met in Berlin in 1864
when studying abroad,
and were impressed enough
that they actually
named dinosaur species
after each other.
Obviously Cope and Marsh's
brief professional camaraderie
didn't translate into
a lasting friendship.
Either that, or they thought
bribery, theft, and destruction
of priceless artifacts were
things good buddies do.
Towards the end
of the Bone Wars,
Cope was pretty beaten down.
He was broke and divorced
with nothing more
to show for his
bitter feud with Marsh
than a tarnished reputation
and a collection of fossils,
and Marsh did his best
to take those, too.
In the 1880s, Marsh became
the head of the US Geological
Survey, and he
pushed through a law
stating that any
fossils collected
using any kind of
government funding
automatically belonged to
the Smithsonian Museum.
His goal was to
take Cope's fossils,
but Cope was an
obsessive record keeper,
and he had the receipts to
prove that he had indeed
blown his own cash to acquire
the majority of the specimens.
Proof of his fossil ownership
weren't the only receipts
Cope brought.
After nearly having a specimen
seized by the Smithsonian
thanks to Marsh's chicanery,
Cope published a damning record
of the many slimy misdeeds
and outright felonies Marsh
had committed during the Bone
Wars, corroborated by many
of Marsh's former employees.
Marsh was forced to
resign from his position
as the head of the
Geological Survey,
and as an added ironic
twist of the knife,
he was unable to prove
ownership of most
of his vast fossil collection.
So in accordance with the law
he championed in an attempt
to screw over Cope, the
majority of Marsh's fossils
were seized by the Smithsonian.
Cue sad trombone.
Had Twitter existed in
the late 19th century,
Marsh and Cope would
be @ing and subtweeting
each other every
minute of the day.
Instead they had to make do
with ridiculing each other
in the scientific
journals of the day,
constantly pointing out the
other's errors and inaccuracies
while trumping up their
own theories in the pages
of these academic publications.
They would even attempt
to rename dinosaur species
that the other had discovered.
In a particularly
outrageous example,
Marsh, Cope, and
Joseph Leidy engaged
in a protracted argument
over the name of a species
all three men had
independently discovered,
like the episode of The
Simpsons where Bart, Millhouse,
and Martin can't decide who
gets to keep the Radioactive
Man comic.
The expansion of railroads
opened up the American West,
and Marsh and Cope
wasted no time
racing each other to the Pacific
coast to discover more fossils.
It would turn out to be one of
the most lucrative decisions
of their respective careers.
New excavation sites in states
like Wyoming and Colorado
yielded some of the
most famous finds
in paleontological
history, including
discoveries of Triceratops,
Stegosaurus, and Allosaurus.
But the enthusiasm, with
which the two men attacked
their rivalry, continued
to do almost as much harm
to the field as good.
You already know
that Marsh firmly
believed in putting his
money in the right palms
to give him the edge of a Cope.
The problem was, everyone
else knew it, too.
When some railroad workers
unearthed an impressive cache
of fossils in the 1870s,
they contacted Marsh,
but hinted that they were
also talking to Cope, even
though they weren't,
knowing that Marsh's need
to outbid his rival would allow
them to ask for some truly
ridiculous prices.
Marsh would have fallen hard
for that Nigerian prince's scam
if dinosaur bones
were on the table.
Although Marsh eventually became
the head of the US Geological
Survey, Cope scored
an early victory
by getting a position
with the organization
to survey new
territory out west.
He used this position to
document and claim credit
for as many species
as he possibly could,
which angered pretty
much all of his peers,
including his
mentor, Joseph Leidy.
Marsh responded to Cope's
glory-hogging in typical Marsh
fashion--
he hired a bunch of goons to
infiltrate Cope's expeditions
and steal fossils.
You really have to
admire his consistency.
Marsh was born poor, but
he had a wealthy uncle
in George Peabody, who founded
the Museum of Natural Science
at Yale University.
In a shocking coincidence,
Marsh received
his first academic
position at the museum
not long after it was founded.
Marsh's uncle funded
many of his studies
and provided him with
the valuable connections
that would eventually make
him the head of the Geological
Survey.
Uncle Peabody's patronage
helped Marsh keep up
with Cope, who was
born into wealth
and had a sizable inheritance,
which would quickly
evaporate once he met Marsh.
Despite Cope's victory
in effectively getting
Marsh fired from the
Geological Survey
and having most of his specimens
seized by the Smithsonian,
Marsh actually discovered
more dinosaur species,
and both men died poor and
with academic reputations that
could gently be described
as less than favorable.
They were ultimately both
casualties of the Bone Wars
rather than victors.
The real winner
was Joseph Leidy.
He eventually got sick of
the conflict between Marsh
and his former protege Cope
and left dinosaur hunting
altogether to study other
prehistoric species,
ultimately discovering more
than 400 species of protazoans
and invertebrates.
The Smithsonian also
made out pretty good.
Thanks to the rivalry and
Marsh's self-defeating law,
the Smithsonian wound up
with an impressive collection
of dinosaur bones.
Cope died in 1897, but
he tried one last time
to score a spectacular
dunk on his hated rival.
In his will, Cope stipulated
that his brain was
to be removed from
his body and weighed,
and challenged Marsh to
do the same upon his death
to see whose brain
was the heaviest.
Cope hoped that
his own pettiness
would be matched by Marsh.
But Marsh, showing restraint
for perhaps the first time
in his life, declined
to accept the challenge,
and took the secret of his brain
weight to the grave in 1899.
The rivalry between Edward
Drinker Cope and Othniel
Charles Marsh pushed the
field of paleontology
forward more than any
other period in history,
but the reckless and
decidedly unscientific
behavior gave dinosaur
hunting an unsavory reputation
that lingered for generations.
So who are you, Team
Marsh or Team Cope?
What about Team Leidy?
Let us know in the
comments below.
And while you're
at it, subscribe
to more of our weird history.
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