Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh and the Great Dinosaur Bone Wars

It might seem strange today that people would care so much about a bunch of dead animals. But ever since Sir Richard Owen coined the term dinosaur in 1842 (the term means terrible lizard), some people have doggedly pursued the fossilized remains of these creatures, upturning the Earth to find them. The pursuit has made some people famous; it also has ruined lives. Doctor Gideon Mantell, for example, discovered the well-known dinosaur Iguanodon; his ostracism from the scientific community and pursuit of further bones cost him his health and marriage, and he died a bitter old man.

One of the most famous periods of fossil excavation of all time was in part fueled by a bitter personal rivalry between two men. Both were famous scientists with money to burn and pride on the line. Their names were Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, and together they would redefine the landscape of American paleontology and the world's understanding of the largest creatures to roam the Earth-their battle would become known as the Bone Wars.

How they got there is an interesting story. The two men were very different. Cope (born 1840) was the son of a wealthy merchant and philanthropist, and was raised in Fairfield outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From an early age, Cope distinguished himself as something of a boy genius. He read voraciously, drew, and took a keen interest in the natural world. While Cope's father wanted him to become a gentleman farmer, he eventually gave up, as there was no way to dissuade his son from his scientific ambitions. Despite little in the way of formal scientific training Cope took to his chosen profession easily; he published his first paper before he was twenty. By the time he left for Europe as part of the traditional "grand tour" rich kids did back then, he was already established and had worked with some of the most eminent American scientists.

While Cope was known to be energetic, brash, and occasionally possessed of a legendary temper, Marsh was quieter, more slow-paced and methodical. His big break was that his uncle was the rich philanthropist George Peabody. Marsh's Yale education was paid for by Peabody, and at Marsh's request he created the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, which (unsurprisingly) gave Marsh a job. Marsh had gone from a working-class background to become exceedingly wealthy with the money left to him by Peabody upon his death in 1869.

The two scientists met in Berlin in 1863. By all accounts, they appeared to hit it off on first meeting; they stayed together for days, and Marsh led Cope on a tour of the city. Even then, the differences between them were apparent; Marsh was nine years the senior and had two university degrees under his belt; Cope had one semester of university but had published 37 papers by age 23 compared to Marsh's two. The two exchanged correspondence and visited each other on returning to the United States.

However, there appear signs in the two men's letters that they weren't so fond of each other as let on. Furthermore, Marsh secretly bribed the operators of a marl pit where Cope prospected for fossils-the stream of finds that had been coming to Cope was diverted to Marsh. Marsh also humiliated Cope by pointing out that he had reconstructed the sea reptile Elasmosaurus incorrectly, putting the skull on the tail. Cope, for his part, began prospecting in parts of Kansas and Wyoming that Marsh considered "his" territory. Soon enough, the friendship was broken, and the two began attacking each other in scientific publications. Even more damage was done when agents in the employ of Marsh joined an expedition of Cope's and even accidentally forwarded fossils to Philadelphia instead of Yale.

By the 1870s the two were irrevocably on bad terms; any pretense of friendship was dead by 1872, and by 1873 the mood had turned to outright hostility. Marsh made his last trip along with Yale students west that same year; from then on he would employ other collectors to do prospecting for him. Cope, meanwhile, made do with field agents but also took to searching for bones himself, often using his association with the United States Geological Survey as an outlet to publish his findings.

The hostilities between Cope and Marsh turned into a fossil war in 1877. That year Marsh received a letter from Arthur Lakes, a schoolteacher in Golden, Colorado. Lakes had found giant bones embedded in the rock outside the town-clearly of some "gigantic saurian". Marsh was slow to respond, during which time Lakes sent some bones to Cope. But when Marsh finally did get back to Lakes, he immediately paid him $100, urged him to keep the finds a secret and sent his agent Benjamin Mudge to assist Lakes and find more bones. Marsh not only beat Cope to the punch in describing Lakes' find, but Lakes requested that the bones he sent to Cope be shipped north to Marsh instead, a severe insult to the brash Cope.

Lakes wasn't the only one finding bones out west. Cope received his own letter from prospector O.W. Lucas, who had found bones of an even larger animal than Lakes' outside Canon City, Colorado. When he learned of the Canon finds Marsh sent another agent, Samuel Wendell Williston, to start his own prospecting in the region, but was dismayed to learn that not only was Lucas finding the better bones, but he refused to quit working for Cope. Further setbacks included the collapse of his quarry at Lakes' site; however, he received an unexpected boon in the form of yet another letter.

Two railroad workers using fake names informed Marsh they had found lots of bones in Como Bluff, Wyoming-but that Cope was already sniffing around the area. Marsh hurriedly contracted the men to work for him, and soon trainloads of bones were being shipped east for Marsh. Word of Marsh's windfall soon spread, however-in part because the workers Carlin and Reed were interested in boosting demand for their talents and bones. Cope sent in his own men to surreptitiously hunt for bones in the area; Carlin grew tired of Marsh's infrequent payments and switched sides, joining Cope's employ.

Cope and Marsh's digs lasted a whopping fifteen years, until 1892. Both men and their agents feuded openly and behind the scenes. Carlin locked Reed out of the Como Bluff train station, forcing his former associate to crate fossils on the cold train platform. Lakes was sent to assist Reed in the digging, but the two men grew to hate each other and after abandoning a quarry in a freezing blizzard Lakes threw in the towel and went back to teaching. Cope had his own setbacks; while Williston's brother Frank ended up joining Cope, Frank in turn joined Carlin in quitting and creating their own bone-prospecting outfit.

There was also increasing professional pressure from back east. Harvard was among the institutions that sent its own groups out west prospecting for fossils. Eventually most of the original agents of Cope and Marsh retired; Reed, for example, became a sheepherder in 1884. This period was marked by bribery, accusations of spying, and on one occasion, Cope and Marsh's men throwing stones at each other.

While battles were being waged over the bones in the west, Cope and Marsh were at each other's throats in the east as well. They mercilessly attacked the other's character and work in equal measure. Cope churned papers out at an exceptional rate Marsh could not match; however Cope invariably made more mistakes by the rapid publication that Marsh could point out. Each published their own names for the same species; Cope went so far as to create a new classification for mammals that completely disregarded Marsh's work. By the 1880s, Cope had seen several misfortunes befall him; his government funding was largely cut off, and his silver mine prospects failed. Finally, when the US government (influenced by Marsh) asked for Cope to return fossils he had collected during government survey work (by this time Cope's fossil collection was his single most valuable asset), Cope went for the nuclear option. Marsh's biggest chink in his armor was his lax payment and generally poor working relationship with his assistants; even Williston was eventually alienated by Marsh's refusal to credit his prospectors. Cope took these grievances to the press, and the public was able to read about the salacious allegations each scientist threw at each other. The scientific community had known about the bitter feud between the men for decades, but now the public at large was finally learning about the closed-doors brawl. Unfortunately for Cope, the spectacle soon faded from the public mind and little changed. However, the coverage of the US geological surveys, combined with concern about government spending, turned up the political pressure on Marsh's friend and employer for the survey, one John Wesley Powell. In the end, Powell cut off Marsh's own appropriation and asked him to resign.

The rivalry lasted until each scientist's death. Cope died in 1897, but by that time both men had been largely ruined financially, their previous secured fortunes having evaporated in the quest for bones. In terms of numbers, Marsh had won the war, discovering 80 new dinosaur species compared to Cope's 56. But Cope had one final challenge to issue. At the time, it was believed that brain size correlated to intelligence, so Cope directed in his will that his brain be measured against Cope's. Marsh never rose to the challenge, but Cope's skull remains preserved in the University of Pennsylvania.

Despite all the bad blood between the scientists, their feud had positive impacts on science. Before the Bone Wars, there were only nine known species of dinosaur in North America. Among the species they discovered were the best-known dinosaurs today-Triceratops, Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Coelophysis. For the first time scientists had complete skeletons to analyze, and the public grew in understanding and appreciation for these massive, long-dead beasts. Ultimately, Cope and Marsh not only defined the future of paleontology, but they brought dinosaurs to life with the public-and even today, dinosaur ghosts roam the west, shadows of a time long past.

Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh, and the Great Dinosaur Bone Wars: References
*Jaffe, Mark (2000). The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War Between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science (ISBN 0517707608).
*Shor, Elizabeth (1974). The Fossil Feud Between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh (ISBN 0682479411).
*Wallace, David Rains (1999). The Bonehunters' Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age (ISBN 0618082409).
*Wilford, John Noble (1985). The Riddle of the Dinosaur (ISBN 039474392X).