December 31, 2012 • 20 mins
In this two-part podcast, we explore the rivalry between paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Marsh was a farmer's son and Cope grew up in a wealthy household. The two started out as friends, but their friendship soon soured.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to
bling a chokerate boarding and we had a lot of
fun this year. I've had a lot of fun at
least covering scientific rivalries. We've talked about horse Wells in
(00:23):
the Gas War, and of course Tesla and Edison in
the War of the Currents. That was one that was
really popular because it was much anticipated and requested beforehand.
It stirred up a little rivalry on our Facebook page,
it did, but it's got a lot of strong support. Yeah.
I was about to say that the rivalries out there,
but yeah, Tesla is definitely kind of a favorite these days,
(00:45):
I would say so. Those episodes and the Mary Annie
Princess of Paleontology episode that we did earlier this year,
got listeners clamoring for a podcast on another scientific war,
one about two nineteenth century paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and
off Charles Marsh. Now, Cope and Marsh duped it out
over America's fossil deposits during a time when the field
(01:06):
of paleontology was still pretty new. Their race to find
fossils named the species that they belonged to and published
their findings about. All of this came to be known
by many names, including the Great Dinosaur Feud, the Dinosaur Rush,
and the Bone Wars are titled today. Uh and they
really made an impact too. Prior to their work, there
(01:27):
were only nine known species of North American dinosaurs, and
these two men's efforts led to the classification of a
hundred and thirty six new species. But Cope and Marsh's
feud also resulted in a lot more than just the
advancement of their field. It was kind of an embarrassment too.
It was a pretty dark time in a lot of
(01:48):
ways that ended up damaging both of their reputations and
maybe even hindered scientific progress in some respect. Yes, so
much so that it's interesting their feud has been regarded
quote as a kind of scientific indiscretion, says James Pennic
in an article in American Heritage. So we're going to
kind of explore that a little bit, but in two parts.
(02:08):
Yes we are in two parts. But to understand why
these guys came to be at such odds, we first
need to discuss a little bit about their backgrounds and
how they came to be in their field in the
first place, because they both took very different paths to
end up basically in the same competition. So we'll start
with Marsh. He's the elder of the two. Auth Neil
(02:28):
Charles Marsh was born October one in Lockport, New York.
His father was very poor. He was a farmer, and
even though Marsh showed a lot of interest in science
from a young age, his father only intended him to
take over the family farms someday. But fortunately for Marsh,
he had a very influential uncle. His His mother, who
(02:50):
had died when he was only three years old, was
the sister of the banker philanthropist George Peabody, much beloved
sister luckily luckily so, of course, Peabody had one of
the largest personal fortunes in the world, according to Panics article,
and it was a good person to to have, especially
if if Marcia's father was kind of struggling with his
(03:11):
with his work. So around age one, Marsh inherited some
money from his uncle that had been meant for his
mother's dowry, and he used this money to attend prep
school at Phillips Academy, and of course, at twenty one.
He was much older than the other kids there. So
you think that Peabody could have advanced him the money
for the education further ahead of time. Yeah, you would
(03:33):
hope so. But that did That wasn't the case. That
didn't happen. So, according to an article by Tom Huntington
in American History, his peers at prep school gave him
nicknames like Daddy and Captain, which you would think would
just be mortifying, but he didn't seem to care, or
if he did, he didn't let it stop him. He
graduated as valedictorian and then convinced his uncle to pay
(03:55):
to send him to Yale College, where he earned an
undergraduate degree in eighteen sixty. He then went on to
earn a master's degree from Yale Sheffield School of Science
a couple of years later, and after that he spent
a little bit of time studying in Europe and convinced
uncle Peabody to donate some more money, this time to
Yale for a Museum of Natural Sciences. And it was
(04:16):
kind of a hard sell because Peabody preferred Harvard. He
would have preferred to have given his money to Harvard,
but marsh did get his way in the end, and
he was appointed to run the museum as curator and
became a professor of paleontology at Yale. So if your
uncle does pony off the money, it's a job. Ultimately, though,
(04:36):
he was the first professor of paleontology in North America
according to Huntington's article, so a big, big step in
his career. So moving on to Cope. Unlike Marsh Edward Drinker,
Cope came from a wealthy Quaker family, so definitely a
bit of a brighter start in life. He was born
in July forty in Philadelphia, so nine years after Marsh,
(05:00):
and he also showed a really early interest in science.
He actually recorded his impressions of the fossils of an
extinct marine reptile called Ichthyosaurus, which I think we talked
about a little bit in the Merrimanning episode. He recorded
his impressions of this when he was only six years old,
so he was like you deplena playing fossil hunter. Yeah.
I think it was probably a little more on top
(05:22):
of it than I was. But when he was eighteen
he also published a scientific paper on salamanders, and another
thing that set Cope apart from Marsh, though is that
he didn't get a lot in the way of a
formal education, which is kind of surprising considering he was
so into science at an early age. He studied for
about a year at the University of Pennsylvania, spent some
(05:42):
time studying the herpetology collections of the Smithsonian, and he
worked as a researcher at the Academy of Natural Sciences
in Philadelphia, but definitely didn't take that sort of traditional
academic path that Marsh took. He did take a little
tour through Europe eventually, though, to further his education and
to keep Cope from becoming involved in the Civil War,
(06:03):
his father sent him abroad to study natural history in
eighteen sixty three and he ended up for a time
at Berlin University in Germany, and coincidentally, Marsh was there
at the same time, and the two guys did become acquainted,
and even though it seems really unbelievable, later they were
actually friendly with each other and they continued their friendship
(06:25):
state bid and after they returned home, even though their
lives did take somewhat different path. Yeah, Marsh of course
came back and he had this nice cush position at
Yale to come into and Cope came back to marry
his cousin Annie Pearn, and he became a professor of
zoology and botany at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. That position, however,
(06:47):
was pretty short lived. Cope left it in eighteen sixty
seven to go study a big deposit of dinosaur fossils
found in New Jersey. So just a little background on
the study of dinosaurs up to this point. According to
Huntington's article, a British scientist named Richard Owen had coined
the term dinosaur in eighteen forty one, but he had
described them as these quote low slung lizard like creatures.
(07:12):
Joseph lighty study of the first US dinosaur find and
hadn't Field, New Jersey in eighteen fifty eight, totally changed
this perception. Lightie worked with the bones of a Hadrosaurus
and showed that it would have walked erect on two
legs instead of on all fours like a lizard like
most people thought, and that first Hadrosaurus, which Lightie helped reconstruct,
(07:32):
became the first complete dinosaur skeleton to be displayed for
the public. According to PBS dot Org, Well and Lighty
had a connection to one of these guys d didn't
he he did. He had been Cope's anatomy professor at
the University of Pennsylvania and was also his mentor at
the Academy of Natural Sciences, So probably someone that Cop
looked up to and learned from. If you're only going
(07:53):
to do one year at at penn he met this guy.
But ultimately Cope did go to New Jersey where this
fossil quarry was, and he participated in several excavations there.
So at this point, as we mentioned, Cope and Marsh
were still friendly with each other, enough so that in
eighteen sixty seven, Cope even named an amphibian fossil Tonius
(08:16):
marsh I after Marsh. I mean, that's a pretty nice
thing to do for your your fellow scientist, I would say. Um.
He also spent a week or so in eighteen sixty
eight showing Marsh around the fossil quarry in New Jersey
where he was working, pointing out his various collection sites,
really being open about his work with Marsh. Something important
(08:37):
to remember later on, Um that year to Marsh wasn't
just gonna take this gift of a dinosaur name and
let it go. He returned the naming compliment, and, according
to PBS dot org, gave a quote new and gigantic
serpent from the tertiary of New Jersey the name Mosasaurus copi. Honest, uh,
(08:59):
that just sure didn't count for a whole lot in
the long run. But still it's a gesture. So just
to give you a little background of why it might
not have been as sweet a gesture as it seemed.
Cope later found out that Marsh had gone behind his
back and made a deal with the New Jersey quarry
owner that ensured that all of the fossils that were
found there would go directly to Marsh first, so basically
(09:22):
cutting Cope out of the loop, kind him out of
the process. Hope is taking around this place, showing off
what he's working on, giving him the tour supposedly, I guess,
being totally open about it, not assuming that Marsh is
going to backstab him. But that's exactly what happened. So
Cope was kind of hoodwinked by this. In the same year,
(09:42):
in eighteen sixty eight, something else happened in their relationship.
In Cope and Marsha's relationship, Cope was in a big
hurry to publish his findings on a new species of plesiosaur,
the fossilized bones of which had been shipped to him
by an Army surgeon from Kansas. And this is how
they receive eve to their their fossils. Sometimes this reminded
me a little bit of the Merry Anning episode, where,
(10:05):
of course the earlier situation we were describing of Cope
going to the dig side and looking himself sounds more
like what you'd expect, but just having bone shipped to
you from from somebody else. Yeah, when we talk about
we'll talk about the bone collectors and so forth a
little more in part two of this, but the sort
of introduces that idea. But anyway, Cope he got these bones.
(10:27):
He called this previously unknown pleas asur Alasmosaurus. Unfortunately, though,
when Cope was reconstructing the Elasmo Sours skeleton, he made
a pretty major error. He reversed all of the vertebrae
and put its head on its tail instead of on
the end of its neck. It's pretty bad and guests
who noticed. Marsh paid a visit to the Academy of
(10:50):
Natural Sciences to check out Cope's work, and of course
he did not hesitate to point out this error, and
he's even said to have been the first person to
who pointed out to Cope. Cope called in Joseph Lady
to take another look and offer up a second opinion.
He confirmed the mistake, and actually, upon looking at the skeleton,
(11:12):
Lady removed the head and placed on reversed it with
what Cope had originally thought was the tail, So pretty
pretty bad, yeah, and light. He also discussed this air
at the next meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences.
So you can imagine it's just like embarrassment on top
of embarrassment. First he's embarrassed, yes, he's embarrassed in front
(11:32):
of his colleague, and then he's embarrassed in front of
his mentor, and then at the Academy of Natural Sciences
in front of this entire meeting of scientists. And of
course also it's in publication. As we mentioned before, it's
already out there in the Journal of the American Philosophical Society.
They had already published his findings, including a drawing of
(11:53):
this incorrect restoration. So Cope frantically starts to try to
buy back every copy of the publication that he could
find but this incident, combined with Marcia's shady dealings regarding
the New Jersey quarry, really seemed to have kicked off
the feud between the two, or at least started the
rift and bad feelings between them. But if you really
(12:14):
look at which of these incidents had more to do
with the bad feelings between them, it really depends on
which one of them that you asked. I mean, Cope
would probably say it had more to do with what
happened in New Jersey, yes, and Marsh would say that
he was just embarrassed and mad that he had pointed
out his mistake. Yeah. Well, Marsh even later wrote of
(12:34):
the incident and said that it was Cope's quote, wounded
vanity that had received a shock from which it never recovered,
and he has since been my bitter enemy. So yeah,
that's Marsh saying, Oh, Cope just can't handle being wrong essentially. Uh.
He also later admitted that while he initially did return
his copy of the publication to Cope as Cope had requested,
(12:58):
trying to hoard all these incorrect copies um, he March
later thought out and bought two additional copies, which he
did hang on to as if he wanted to have
them as some kind of ammunition. Um, seems like something
that your buddy wouldn't do. Only your most bitter enemy
would do that, or at least you would hope. But
(13:19):
this is a great example of how Cope's big rush
to get things published sometimes resulted in him making errors.
But of course marsh although he was said to be
very meticulous, wasn't immune to this either. He he did
make his share of mistakes. Just one example, he once
put a camera source skull on the skeleton of an apatosaurus, which,
(13:40):
according to an article by Renee Clary, James wander c
and Amy Carpinelli in Science Scope, was quote one of
the longest lasting mistakes of paleontology. And we're going to
discuss at least one of his other major errors later
on too. But that's just to give you one example.
And so, of course, in some ways, you know, we've
we've been talking about this rush that both of the
(14:02):
men were constantly under. These errors were a direct result
of competition between them, because not only were they trying
to get their discoveries out there quickly, because the naming
rights were given to ever published a fine first, they
were trying specifically to beat each other to the punch.
I mean, that's not going to make great meticulous work
(14:25):
in the end, but likely right. But the feud between
Cope and Marsh really began in earnest in the eighteen seventies,
when they both headed west to hunt for fossils. Marsha's
first expedition was in eighteen seventy and it was sponsored
by Yale, and he had this whole entourage with him,
including about a dozen Yale students and even an army
(14:46):
escort that they acquired once they had made it to
what's now the Midwest, and they explored Kansas, Wyoming, in Utah,
and according to Huntingson's article, at one point they even
had buffalo Bill Cody as their guide. But by the
time they got back to Yale after that first trip,
they had thirty six boxes of specimens, including bone fragments
from a pterodactyl wing when no pterodactyl had been discovered before,
(15:09):
and Marsh estimated that this giant flying reptile would have
had a wingspan of twenty feet. So Cope and Marsh
when they really started to butt heads was around eighteen
seventy two, when Cope started exploring Wyoming Territory looking for
fossils there. Huntington writes that Marsh was really angry about
this because he considered the area his turf. I guess
(15:29):
because he'd already hunted four fossils around the taste of
his own medicine there, I have to say, but this
ultimately kicked off a really nasty sort of letter writing
campaign between the two. It reminds me of the pamphlet
Wars we sometimes discussed some podcast, but there were tactics
were not just limited towards either. They employed everything from
(15:50):
espionage to theft in their battle to be known as
the best in the field, and I think to a
certain extent, to make sure the other guy was it
was number two you too, or or even lower. So
we're gonna be discussing examples of some of these tactics
in the next episode. Is as well as what happens
when Cope and Marsh finally take their fight to what
(16:11):
turned out to be the ultimate battleground for them, and
it was not the fossil ground, it was Washington, d C. Yeah,
so lots of interesting things to cover in part two,
including I think we'll talk a little bit more just
about their personalities too, and their personal lives, because I
think it gives some interesting insight as to maybe some
more of the root of the animosity. It wasn't necessarily
(16:34):
all about dinosaur bones, not all about it, but a lot,
a lot, yes, that's for sure. All right, Well, before
we sign off for today, we do have a couple
of pieces of the listener mail. One is an email
from a listener Bill and I just wanted to read this.
(16:55):
It's just a couple of sentences, but I wanted to
read it because he brings up Indian tear Tory. Oh
your favorite place, my favorite place, he says. An old
friend used to talk about his dad's birth certificate, stating Oklahoma,
Indian Territory as his birthplace. He was born in a
small town just north of the Red River on April one,
nineteen o six, and in parentheses he put no kidding,
(17:18):
So that was pretty cool. I bet you were. I
bet you as you were born there, but you'd have
to be a lot older. And yeah, I don't think
I that wouldn't work out. I was kind of hoping
um Cope and Marsh would head out Indian Territory way
to do some fossil finding, but I guess not quite
there in the range. They're in the area. But I
(17:39):
have another message from a listener, this time a Facebook
message that talks about a place where Cope and Marsh
definitely did not do any exploring, at least not that
I know of. Anyway. Colby sent us a note on
Facebook and wanted to talk about the Gertrude Bell episode,
and he had kind of an interesting point to make
that I thought was worth sharing a critique of the podcast. Actually,
(18:03):
he said, I love your podcast as a huge history geek.
I think I've listened to almost everyone I know. Your
podcasts aren't meant to be the super definitive statements on subjects,
But the Gertrude Bell one bothered me a bit. The
end painted a really rosy picture on the formation of
Iraq to be overly pc It was really a Western
and paternalistic view on the whole thing. I can't believe
(18:25):
I said something like that. L O L is what
he said in parentheses. The British killed thousands putting down regional,
ethnic and tribal rebellions at this time in Mesopotamia. They
stray villages and farms from the air and use poison
gas I believe, the only Western power to do so
after World War One. So an interesting point to make.
I mean, I thought that we did sort of talk
(18:47):
about how A. T. Wilson tried to squash down the
Arab rebellions in part two of that podcast, but definitely
wasn't a big mention, and so it's worth bringing up again.
It's a good reminder. I guess this wasn't all just
happy happy The Arabs were glad to go along with
having the British rule them for this time. And so
(19:08):
thank you Colby for writing in. I mean, we definitely
can't cover every aspect of every episode as much in
depth as we would like to so, or the or
the implications of what always happens later in the century,
and this is a clear example of if you could,
you could keep going up until the modern day. So true. Yeah,
(19:28):
it's always it's always a good reminder from listeners to
hear what you wish we talk about next time. Yeah,
and we appreciate that when people write in with critiques
and point out things, and especially when they do so
in such a nice way. Yeah. This great cool, So
thanks again Colby, Thanks everyone who writes into us. If
you'd like to send us a comment on a podcast,
(19:51):
or maybe even just an idea suggestion for a future podcast,
you can find us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Facebook and we're on Twitter at miss
in History. And as you bide your time until this
part two of them words comes out, we do have
a lot of paleontology articles, don't we We do, and
you can find them by searching on our homepage at
(20:11):
www dot how staff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff
Works dot com. M
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to
bling a chokerate boarding and we had a lot of
fun this year. I've had a lot of fun at
least covering scientific rivalries. We've talked about horse Wells in
(00:23):
the Gas War, and of course Tesla and Edison in
the War of the Currents. That was one that was
really popular because it was much anticipated and requested beforehand.
It stirred up a little rivalry on our Facebook page,
it did, but it's got a lot of strong support. Yeah.
I was about to say that the rivalries out there,
but yeah, Tesla is definitely kind of a favorite these days,
(00:45):
I would say so. Those episodes and the Mary Annie
Princess of Paleontology episode that we did earlier this year,
got listeners clamoring for a podcast on another scientific war,
one about two nineteenth century paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and
off Charles Marsh. Now, Cope and Marsh duped it out
over America's fossil deposits during a time when the field
(01:06):
of paleontology was still pretty new. Their race to find
fossils named the species that they belonged to and published
their findings about. All of this came to be known
by many names, including the Great Dinosaur Feud, the Dinosaur Rush,
and the Bone Wars are titled today. Uh and they
really made an impact too. Prior to their work, there
(01:27):
were only nine known species of North American dinosaurs, and
these two men's efforts led to the classification of a
hundred and thirty six new species. But Cope and Marsh's
feud also resulted in a lot more than just the
advancement of their field. It was kind of an embarrassment too.
It was a pretty dark time in a lot of
(01:48):
ways that ended up damaging both of their reputations and
maybe even hindered scientific progress in some respect. Yes, so
much so that it's interesting their feud has been regarded
quote as a kind of scientific indiscretion, says James Pennic
in an article in American Heritage. So we're going to
kind of explore that a little bit, but in two parts.
(02:08):
Yes we are in two parts. But to understand why
these guys came to be at such odds, we first
need to discuss a little bit about their backgrounds and
how they came to be in their field in the
first place, because they both took very different paths to
end up basically in the same competition. So we'll start
with Marsh. He's the elder of the two. Auth Neil
(02:28):
Charles Marsh was born October one in Lockport, New York.
His father was very poor. He was a farmer, and
even though Marsh showed a lot of interest in science
from a young age, his father only intended him to
take over the family farms someday. But fortunately for Marsh,
he had a very influential uncle. His His mother, who
(02:50):
had died when he was only three years old, was
the sister of the banker philanthropist George Peabody, much beloved
sister luckily luckily so, of course, Peabody had one of
the largest personal fortunes in the world, according to Panics article,
and it was a good person to to have, especially
if if Marcia's father was kind of struggling with his
(03:11):
with his work. So around age one, Marsh inherited some
money from his uncle that had been meant for his
mother's dowry, and he used this money to attend prep
school at Phillips Academy, and of course, at twenty one.
He was much older than the other kids there. So
you think that Peabody could have advanced him the money
for the education further ahead of time. Yeah, you would
(03:33):
hope so. But that did That wasn't the case. That
didn't happen. So, according to an article by Tom Huntington
in American History, his peers at prep school gave him
nicknames like Daddy and Captain, which you would think would
just be mortifying, but he didn't seem to care, or
if he did, he didn't let it stop him. He
graduated as valedictorian and then convinced his uncle to pay
(03:55):
to send him to Yale College, where he earned an
undergraduate degree in eighteen sixty. He then went on to
earn a master's degree from Yale Sheffield School of Science
a couple of years later, and after that he spent
a little bit of time studying in Europe and convinced
uncle Peabody to donate some more money, this time to
Yale for a Museum of Natural Sciences. And it was
(04:16):
kind of a hard sell because Peabody preferred Harvard. He
would have preferred to have given his money to Harvard,
but marsh did get his way in the end, and
he was appointed to run the museum as curator and
became a professor of paleontology at Yale. So if your
uncle does pony off the money, it's a job. Ultimately, though,
(04:36):
he was the first professor of paleontology in North America
according to Huntington's article, so a big, big step in
his career. So moving on to Cope. Unlike Marsh Edward Drinker,
Cope came from a wealthy Quaker family, so definitely a
bit of a brighter start in life. He was born
in July forty in Philadelphia, so nine years after Marsh,
(05:00):
and he also showed a really early interest in science.
He actually recorded his impressions of the fossils of an
extinct marine reptile called Ichthyosaurus, which I think we talked
about a little bit in the Merrimanning episode. He recorded
his impressions of this when he was only six years old,
so he was like you deplena playing fossil hunter. Yeah.
I think it was probably a little more on top
(05:22):
of it than I was. But when he was eighteen
he also published a scientific paper on salamanders, and another
thing that set Cope apart from Marsh, though is that
he didn't get a lot in the way of a
formal education, which is kind of surprising considering he was
so into science at an early age. He studied for
about a year at the University of Pennsylvania, spent some
(05:42):
time studying the herpetology collections of the Smithsonian, and he
worked as a researcher at the Academy of Natural Sciences
in Philadelphia, but definitely didn't take that sort of traditional
academic path that Marsh took. He did take a little
tour through Europe eventually, though, to further his education and
to keep Cope from becoming involved in the Civil War,
(06:03):
his father sent him abroad to study natural history in
eighteen sixty three and he ended up for a time
at Berlin University in Germany, and coincidentally, Marsh was there
at the same time, and the two guys did become acquainted,
and even though it seems really unbelievable, later they were
actually friendly with each other and they continued their friendship
(06:25):
state bid and after they returned home, even though their
lives did take somewhat different path. Yeah, Marsh of course
came back and he had this nice cush position at
Yale to come into and Cope came back to marry
his cousin Annie Pearn, and he became a professor of
zoology and botany at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. That position, however,
(06:47):
was pretty short lived. Cope left it in eighteen sixty
seven to go study a big deposit of dinosaur fossils
found in New Jersey. So just a little background on
the study of dinosaurs up to this point. According to
Huntington's article, a British scientist named Richard Owen had coined
the term dinosaur in eighteen forty one, but he had
described them as these quote low slung lizard like creatures.
(07:12):
Joseph lighty study of the first US dinosaur find and
hadn't Field, New Jersey in eighteen fifty eight, totally changed
this perception. Lightie worked with the bones of a Hadrosaurus
and showed that it would have walked erect on two
legs instead of on all fours like a lizard like
most people thought, and that first Hadrosaurus, which Lightie helped reconstruct,
(07:32):
became the first complete dinosaur skeleton to be displayed for
the public. According to PBS dot Org, Well and Lighty
had a connection to one of these guys d didn't
he he did. He had been Cope's anatomy professor at
the University of Pennsylvania and was also his mentor at
the Academy of Natural Sciences, So probably someone that Cop
looked up to and learned from. If you're only going
(07:53):
to do one year at at penn he met this guy.
But ultimately Cope did go to New Jersey where this
fossil quarry was, and he participated in several excavations there.
So at this point, as we mentioned, Cope and Marsh
were still friendly with each other, enough so that in
eighteen sixty seven, Cope even named an amphibian fossil Tonius
(08:16):
marsh I after Marsh. I mean, that's a pretty nice
thing to do for your your fellow scientist, I would say. Um.
He also spent a week or so in eighteen sixty
eight showing Marsh around the fossil quarry in New Jersey
where he was working, pointing out his various collection sites,
really being open about his work with Marsh. Something important
(08:37):
to remember later on, Um that year to Marsh wasn't
just gonna take this gift of a dinosaur name and
let it go. He returned the naming compliment, and, according
to PBS dot org, gave a quote new and gigantic
serpent from the tertiary of New Jersey the name Mosasaurus copi. Honest, uh,
(08:59):
that just sure didn't count for a whole lot in
the long run. But still it's a gesture. So just
to give you a little background of why it might
not have been as sweet a gesture as it seemed.
Cope later found out that Marsh had gone behind his
back and made a deal with the New Jersey quarry
owner that ensured that all of the fossils that were
found there would go directly to Marsh first, so basically
(09:22):
cutting Cope out of the loop, kind him out of
the process. Hope is taking around this place, showing off
what he's working on, giving him the tour supposedly, I guess,
being totally open about it, not assuming that Marsh is
going to backstab him. But that's exactly what happened. So
Cope was kind of hoodwinked by this. In the same year,
(09:42):
in eighteen sixty eight, something else happened in their relationship.
In Cope and Marsha's relationship, Cope was in a big
hurry to publish his findings on a new species of plesiosaur,
the fossilized bones of which had been shipped to him
by an Army surgeon from Kansas. And this is how
they receive eve to their their fossils. Sometimes this reminded
me a little bit of the Merry Anning episode, where,
(10:05):
of course the earlier situation we were describing of Cope
going to the dig side and looking himself sounds more
like what you'd expect, but just having bone shipped to
you from from somebody else. Yeah, when we talk about
we'll talk about the bone collectors and so forth a
little more in part two of this, but the sort
of introduces that idea. But anyway, Cope he got these bones.
(10:27):
He called this previously unknown pleas asur Alasmosaurus. Unfortunately, though,
when Cope was reconstructing the Elasmo Sours skeleton, he made
a pretty major error. He reversed all of the vertebrae
and put its head on its tail instead of on
the end of its neck. It's pretty bad and guests
who noticed. Marsh paid a visit to the Academy of
(10:50):
Natural Sciences to check out Cope's work, and of course
he did not hesitate to point out this error, and
he's even said to have been the first person to
who pointed out to Cope. Cope called in Joseph Lady
to take another look and offer up a second opinion.
He confirmed the mistake, and actually, upon looking at the skeleton,
(11:12):
Lady removed the head and placed on reversed it with
what Cope had originally thought was the tail, So pretty
pretty bad, yeah, and light. He also discussed this air
at the next meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences.
So you can imagine it's just like embarrassment on top
of embarrassment. First he's embarrassed, yes, he's embarrassed in front
(11:32):
of his colleague, and then he's embarrassed in front of
his mentor, and then at the Academy of Natural Sciences
in front of this entire meeting of scientists. And of
course also it's in publication. As we mentioned before, it's
already out there in the Journal of the American Philosophical Society.
They had already published his findings, including a drawing of
(11:53):
this incorrect restoration. So Cope frantically starts to try to
buy back every copy of the publication that he could
find but this incident, combined with Marcia's shady dealings regarding
the New Jersey quarry, really seemed to have kicked off
the feud between the two, or at least started the
rift and bad feelings between them. But if you really
(12:14):
look at which of these incidents had more to do
with the bad feelings between them, it really depends on
which one of them that you asked. I mean, Cope
would probably say it had more to do with what
happened in New Jersey, yes, and Marsh would say that
he was just embarrassed and mad that he had pointed
out his mistake. Yeah. Well, Marsh even later wrote of
(12:34):
the incident and said that it was Cope's quote, wounded
vanity that had received a shock from which it never recovered,
and he has since been my bitter enemy. So yeah,
that's Marsh saying, Oh, Cope just can't handle being wrong essentially. Uh.
He also later admitted that while he initially did return
his copy of the publication to Cope as Cope had requested,
(12:58):
trying to hoard all these incorrect copies um, he March
later thought out and bought two additional copies, which he
did hang on to as if he wanted to have
them as some kind of ammunition. Um, seems like something
that your buddy wouldn't do. Only your most bitter enemy
would do that, or at least you would hope. But
(13:19):
this is a great example of how Cope's big rush
to get things published sometimes resulted in him making errors.
But of course marsh although he was said to be
very meticulous, wasn't immune to this either. He he did
make his share of mistakes. Just one example, he once
put a camera source skull on the skeleton of an apatosaurus, which,
(13:40):
according to an article by Renee Clary, James wander c
and Amy Carpinelli in Science Scope, was quote one of
the longest lasting mistakes of paleontology. And we're going to
discuss at least one of his other major errors later
on too. But that's just to give you one example.
And so, of course, in some ways, you know, we've
we've been talking about this rush that both of the
(14:02):
men were constantly under. These errors were a direct result
of competition between them, because not only were they trying
to get their discoveries out there quickly, because the naming
rights were given to ever published a fine first, they
were trying specifically to beat each other to the punch.
I mean, that's not going to make great meticulous work
(14:25):
in the end, but likely right. But the feud between
Cope and Marsh really began in earnest in the eighteen seventies,
when they both headed west to hunt for fossils. Marsha's
first expedition was in eighteen seventy and it was sponsored
by Yale, and he had this whole entourage with him,
including about a dozen Yale students and even an army
(14:46):
escort that they acquired once they had made it to
what's now the Midwest, and they explored Kansas, Wyoming, in Utah,
and according to Huntingson's article, at one point they even
had buffalo Bill Cody as their guide. But by the
time they got back to Yale after that first trip,
they had thirty six boxes of specimens, including bone fragments
from a pterodactyl wing when no pterodactyl had been discovered before,
(15:09):
and Marsh estimated that this giant flying reptile would have
had a wingspan of twenty feet. So Cope and Marsh
when they really started to butt heads was around eighteen
seventy two, when Cope started exploring Wyoming Territory looking for
fossils there. Huntington writes that Marsh was really angry about
this because he considered the area his turf. I guess
(15:29):
because he'd already hunted four fossils around the taste of
his own medicine there, I have to say, but this
ultimately kicked off a really nasty sort of letter writing
campaign between the two. It reminds me of the pamphlet
Wars we sometimes discussed some podcast, but there were tactics
were not just limited towards either. They employed everything from
(15:50):
espionage to theft in their battle to be known as
the best in the field, and I think to a
certain extent, to make sure the other guy was it
was number two you too, or or even lower. So
we're gonna be discussing examples of some of these tactics
in the next episode. Is as well as what happens
when Cope and Marsh finally take their fight to what
(16:11):
turned out to be the ultimate battleground for them, and
it was not the fossil ground, it was Washington, d C. Yeah,
so lots of interesting things to cover in part two,
including I think we'll talk a little bit more just
about their personalities too, and their personal lives, because I
think it gives some interesting insight as to maybe some
more of the root of the animosity. It wasn't necessarily
(16:34):
all about dinosaur bones, not all about it, but a lot,
a lot, yes, that's for sure. All right, Well, before
we sign off for today, we do have a couple
of pieces of the listener mail. One is an email
from a listener Bill and I just wanted to read this.
(16:55):
It's just a couple of sentences, but I wanted to
read it because he brings up Indian tear Tory. Oh
your favorite place, my favorite place, he says. An old
friend used to talk about his dad's birth certificate, stating Oklahoma,
Indian Territory as his birthplace. He was born in a
small town just north of the Red River on April one,
nineteen o six, and in parentheses he put no kidding,
(17:18):
So that was pretty cool. I bet you were. I
bet you as you were born there, but you'd have
to be a lot older. And yeah, I don't think
I that wouldn't work out. I was kind of hoping
um Cope and Marsh would head out Indian Territory way
to do some fossil finding, but I guess not quite
there in the range. They're in the area. But I
(17:39):
have another message from a listener, this time a Facebook
message that talks about a place where Cope and Marsh
definitely did not do any exploring, at least not that
I know of. Anyway. Colby sent us a note on
Facebook and wanted to talk about the Gertrude Bell episode,
and he had kind of an interesting point to make
that I thought was worth sharing a critique of the podcast. Actually,
(18:03):
he said, I love your podcast as a huge history geek.
I think I've listened to almost everyone I know. Your
podcasts aren't meant to be the super definitive statements on subjects,
But the Gertrude Bell one bothered me a bit. The
end painted a really rosy picture on the formation of
Iraq to be overly pc It was really a Western
and paternalistic view on the whole thing. I can't believe
(18:25):
I said something like that. L O L is what
he said in parentheses. The British killed thousands putting down regional,
ethnic and tribal rebellions at this time in Mesopotamia. They
stray villages and farms from the air and use poison
gas I believe, the only Western power to do so
after World War One. So an interesting point to make.
I mean, I thought that we did sort of talk
(18:47):
about how A. T. Wilson tried to squash down the
Arab rebellions in part two of that podcast, but definitely
wasn't a big mention, and so it's worth bringing up again.
It's a good reminder. I guess this wasn't all just
happy happy The Arabs were glad to go along with
having the British rule them for this time. And so
(19:08):
thank you Colby for writing in. I mean, we definitely
can't cover every aspect of every episode as much in
depth as we would like to so, or the or
the implications of what always happens later in the century,
and this is a clear example of if you could,
you could keep going up until the modern day. So true. Yeah,
(19:28):
it's always it's always a good reminder from listeners to
hear what you wish we talk about next time. Yeah,
and we appreciate that when people write in with critiques
and point out things, and especially when they do so
in such a nice way. Yeah. This great cool, So
thanks again Colby, Thanks everyone who writes into us. If
you'd like to send us a comment on a podcast,
(19:51):
or maybe even just an idea suggestion for a future podcast,
you can find us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
We're also on Facebook and we're on Twitter at miss
in History. And as you bide your time until this
part two of them words comes out, we do have
a lot of paleontology articles, don't we We do, and
you can find them by searching on our homepage at
(20:11):
www dot how staff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff
Works dot com. M
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