Bone Wars
Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh used underhanded methods to try to outdo the other in the field. Their search for fossils led them west to rich bone beds in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. The efforts of the two men led to more than 136 new species of dinosaurs being discovered and described.
About Bone Wars in brief
Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh used underhanded methods to try to outdo the other in the field. Their search for fossils led them west to rich bone beds in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. The efforts of the two men led to more than 136 new species of dinosaurs being discovered and described. The products of the Bone Wars resulted in an increase in knowledge of prehistoric life, and sparked the public’s interest in dinosaurs, leading to continued fossil excavation in North America in the decades to follow. Many historical books and fictional adaptations have been published about this period of intense fossil-hunting activity. The two men were financially and socially ruined by their attempts to outcompete and disgrace each other, but they made important contributions to science and the field of paleontology and provided substantial material for further work—both scientists left behind many unopened boxes of fossils after their deaths. In the 1870s, Cope was granted a position on the U.S. Geological Survey under Ferdinand Hayden. While the position afforded Cope a great opportunity to collect fossils in the West, it offered no salary. In June 1872 Cope set off on his first trip to observe the Eocene bone beds, intending to publish his first reports of Eocene fossils. In July 1872, he published the first official reports of the American West’s large fossil finds. In 1877, he began collecting in Wyoming, further damaging his professional attentions to Marsh’s private bone finds in Kansas and Kansas.
Cope, in turn, began collecting Marsh-hunted Wyoming, which further damaged their relationship. By the end of the Great Dinosaur Rush, both men had exhausted their funds in the pursuit of Paleontological supremacy. By 1892, the two paleontologists used their wealth and influence to finance their own expeditions and to procure services and dinosaur bones from fossil hunters. They even named species after each other. Over time their relations soured, due in part to their strong personalities. Both were quarrelsome and distrustful. Their differences also extended into the scientific realm, as Cope. was a firm supporter of Neo-Lamarckism while Marsh supported Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Even at the best of times, both scientists were inclined to look down on each other subtly. As one observer put it, \”The patrician Edward may have considered Marsh not quite a gentleman. The academic OthNiel probably regarded Cope as notquite a professional. The two began attacking each other in papers and publications, and their personal relations deteriorated. One observer said that Marsh humiliated Cope by pointing out that his reconstruction of the plesiosaur Elasmosaurus was flawed, with the head placed where the tail should have been. It was Leidy who corrected it shortly afterwards. Cope’s flair for dramatic writing suited Hayden, who needed to make a popular impression with the public to make the official report of his finds.
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This page is based on the article Bone Wars published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
