During the late 19th century, the race was on to see who could discover the most dinosaurs. The two combatants of these 'Bone Wars' were Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.
Edward was born on 28th July 1840 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Alfred and Hanna Cope. His mother died when he was three years old and his father re-married to Rebecca Biddle. His father wanted Edward to receive a Quaker education like he had and so he sent him to the Friends' Boarding School. It was here that he developed his interest in natural history. However, his father did not want his son to pursue an academic career but instead to become a gentleman farmer like himself. Edward hated farming, finding it boring and continued to educate himself in his spare time. Eventually, his father relented and agreed to finance his studies at the University of Pennsylvania under the tutelage of Joseph Leidy. It was here that he published his first papers.
In 1863, with the American Civil War raging on, Cope took a tour of Europe, visiting many reputable museums and societies. Some of his biographers believe he took this tour to avoid being drafted into the war. During this tour, Cope had a love affair with a unnamed woman. His father strongly disapproved of this relationship and forced Edward to end it. Also during this European foray, Cope met another fellow American, Othniel Marsh, who was studying at the University of Berlin. The two men became friends and after Cope went back home, they stayed in touch with each other, exchanging papers, specimens and letters.
After returning to the States, Cope got a teaching job as the Professor of Zoology at Haverford College, Pennsylvania. In 1864 he married Annie Pim, a fellow Quaker and, two years later, had a daughter Julia. It was at this time that Cope described the first of many prehistoric animals, the prehistoric amphibian Amphibamus grandiceps (Cope, 1865).
Between 1866 and 1867, Cope travelled across America, exploring caves and pits. He resigned from his post as professor and sold the family farm in order to finance his research. From the caves and pits, he described new prehistoric animals such as the plesiosaur Elasmosaurus platyurus (Cope, 1868) and the dinosaur Laelaps (Cope, 1866) (subsequently renamed Dryptosaurus (Marsh, 1877) because Laelaps had already been used by a mite (Koch, 1836) but Cope refused to acknowledge the new name and continued using Laelaps, even naming new species).
The 1870s were a high point in Cope's academic career. Amongst his best known discoveries of this time are the mammal-like reptile Lystrosaurus (Cope, 1870), the crocodile-like reptile Champsosaurus (Cope, 1876) and potentially the largest dinosaur that ever lived Amphicoelias (Cope, 1878). Cope published between 25 and 76 papers each year. Unfortunately, this high volume of publications meant that Cope made many errors and had to print multiple corrections and redactions. This did not do his reputation any favours. It also didn't help that he mostly published his works in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society journal, a journal that was not widely read. Meanwhile, Marsh published very high-quality papers in the much more well-read American Journal of Science and his reputation skyrocketed.
Unfortunately, the 1870s also marked a low for Cope as his father, Alfred, died in 1875. This hit Cope hard as he was always close to his father, despite his father's reservations about his scientific career. He spent the rest of the decade writing up the findings of his earlier expeditions. He made another trip to Europe in 1878 and met with some of the greatest palaeontologists of the time including Richard Owen, Thomas Huxley, Ferdinand Hayden, Albert Guenther and Harry Seeley.
Cope is best known for his fierce rivalry with Othniel Marsh. This all started when Cope asked Marsh to examine his fossil of Elasmosaurus that he had discovered and reconstructed. Marsh informed Cope that he had, in fact, stuck the head on the end of the tail! The two argued back and forth for weeks about it until Cope asked his former mentor Joseph Leidy to have a look. Leidy took one glance at the skeleton, picked up the head and placed it at the other end. Cope was devastated because he had just published a paper describing Elasmosaurus with the incorrect drawing. It got worse when Leidy brought the issue to public knowledge during a meeting of the American Philosophical Society. Marsh just sat there looking smug. Cope was furious.
In 1877, American schoolteacher Arthur Lakes found a stash of fossil bones in Morrison, Colorado. He sent these bones to both Cope and Marsh. However, when Marsh agreed to pay Lakes $100 for his finds, Lakes asked Cope to forward the bones to Marsh. Cope was highly offended. Instead, Cope received bones from another schoolteacher Oramel Lucas from nearby Canyon City.
Shortly after this, both Cope and Marsh heard about a large boneyard at Como Bluff in Wyoming and sent collectors to the site. Both groups attempted to sabotage the others' progress with Cope offering to pay Marsh's men large sums of money if they defected and Marsh attempted to persuade Ferdinand Hayden, Cope's chief publisher, to reduce the number of papers of Cope's he approved. Marsh even had his dig sites dynamited so Cope couldn't dig there after they left!
In 1877, Cope returned from a trip to Europe to be greeted by two years' worth of bones found by Lucas. Amongst them were the remains of the dinosaur Camarasaurus (Cope, 1877). In 1879, the United States Congress assembled all the geological survey teams into one and appointed Clarence King as the leader. Cope was hopeful that he would be named chief palaeontologist so you can imagine his disappointment when King named Marsh to that position instead.
Then things got much worse in the 1880s. Marsh's role in the Survey gave him access to essentially unlimited resources. Cope, on the other hand, was running out of money. Fast. His good friend Ferdinand Hayden, who worked for the Survey, lost his position, and was unable to fund Cope's work. Instead Cope turned to mines, investing in a number of silver mines in New Mexico. For a while, this tied him over, but by 1886, he was forced to sell his stock as the mines closed down. In the same year, he took a teaching job at the University of Pennsylvania but it wasn't enough to satisfy him, so he looked for work elsewhere. Both the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History, both prestigious institutions, turned him down. Although offered to join the Survey, Cope refused because it meant working with Marsh and Marsh's buddy Colin Powell.
Marsh convinced Powell to force Cope to return all the specimens he had gathered as part of previous government surveys. Cope was outraged and refused on the grounds that he had been a volunteer on those surveys and not been an official employee and therefore the specimens he had found were his and not the government's. However, Cope decided it was time to fight back and he went to the editor of the New York Herald with a notepad in which he had recorded every mistake and accusation made against Marsh and Powell. This he had gathered from previous employees and consisted of claims of errors, employees being denied credit and being underpaid, to misappropriated government funds. Marsh and Powell both published rebuttals but it was in vain. Although no criminal proceedings were made against Marsh and Powell, their reputations suffered and as a result, Marsh was removed as chief palaeontologist and Powell had his funding cut significantly.
However, Cope's own reputation and friendships became strained as well. But he didn't particularly care. In fact, he even named a species of prehistoric mammal after his haters Conacodon cophater (Cope, 1884). He then went on to name two of the most important fossils of his career, the mammal-like reptile Edaphosaurus (Cope, 1882) and the dinosaur Coelophysis (Cope, 1889). In 1889, his good friend Joseph Leidy passed away and Cope succeeded him as Professor of Zoology at the University of Pennsylvania. This increase in pay allowed Cope to buy back the family farm that he previously had to sell.
Then, in 1892, fortune struck Cope. He was offered a position with the Texas Geological Survey to conduct field work. With the extra money generated from this he was able to publish two huge books that had he had been working on for years: Batrachians of North America, about North American amphibians and The Crocodilians Lizards and Snakes of North America, about...well, the title is pretty self-explanatory really. In 1894, his daughter, Julia married an astronomy professor, William Collins. Together they moved to Haverford, Pennsylvania, and afterwards so did Cope's wife, Annie. Cope stayed in Philadelphia, his reasoning being that he did not wish to commute, although his pupil, Henry Osborn (the guy who described Tyrannosaurus) later reported that the two had separated by this point, although they remained amicable towards each other.
Cope's final act before his death was to sell his collections in 1895. His fossil mammal collection, with 10,000 specimens, sold for $32,000, whilst the rest of his 13,000 specimens sold for $29,000. With this extra money, he was able to rehire fossil collectors, including the great Charles Sternberg, with the aim of starting a fresh, new career in palaeontology.
By 1896, Cope was ill. Very ill. He was bedridden with a severe gastrointestinal illness which he said was cystitis. He was looked after by his wife, who came up from Haverford, and his secretary Anna Brown, when his wife was unable to. He prescribed himself medicines composed of morphine, belladonna (a poison derived from the Deadly Nightshade) and formalin (a chemical similar to formaldehyde). When Osborn visited him and discovered what Cope was doing, Osborn convinced him to stop and undergo surgery instead. Arrangements were subsequently made but were then cancelled after Cope showed improvement. Cope, feeling better, travelled to Virginia to look for more fossils but fell ill again and returned home. On 5 April 1897, Osborn visited again but Cope didn't want to talk about his health and instead wanted to have a discussion on the origins of mammals. Over the next few days, other friends visited but again, Cope wanted to have academic debates and not talk about his condition, despite developing a severe fever. Then, on 12 April 1897, Cope passed away at the age of 56. His funeral was a small affair, with a Quaker ceremony and 6 people in attendance. However, he wasn't buried as he had his body donated to science and it still resides at the University of Pennsylvania. His cause of death is still unknown.
See also:
More dinosaurs
More on Amphicoelias fragillimus and other large dinosaurs
Richard Owen
References
Cope, E. (1865) 'On Amphibamus grandiceps, a new Batrachian from the Coal Measures: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1865, pp. 134-137
Cope, E. (1866) 'On the remains of a gigantic extinct dinosaur, from the Cretaceous Green Sand of New Jersey', Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 18, pp. 275-279
Cope, E. (1868) 'Remarks on a new enaliosaurian, Elasmosaurus platyurus', Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 20, pp. 92-93
Cope, E. (1870) 'On the skull of dicynodont Reptilia. Lystrosaurus frontosus from Cape Colony', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 11, p. 419
Cope, E. (1876) 'On some extinct reptiles and Batrachia from the Judith River and Fox Hills Beds of Montana', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 28, pp. 340-359
Cope, E. (1877) 'On a gigantic saurian from the Dakota epoch of Colorado', Palaeontological Bulletin, 25, pp. 5-10
Cope, E. (1878) 'On the Vertebrata of the Dakota Epoch of Colorado', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 17 (100), pp. 233-247
Cope, E. (1882) 'Third contribution to the History of the Vertebrata of the Permian Formation of Texas', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 20, pp. 447-474
Cope, E. (1884) 'Second addition to the the knowledge of the Puerco Eocene epoch', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 21, pp. 309-324
Cope, E. (1889) 'On a new genus of Triassic Dinosauria', The American Naturalist, 23, p. 626
Koch, C. (1836) Deutschlands Crustaceen, Myriapoden und Arachniden, Regensberg: F. Pustet
Marsh, O. (1877) 'Notice of a new and gigantic dinosaur', American Journal of Science and Arts, 14, pp. 87-88
In 1863, with the American Civil War raging on, Cope took a tour of Europe, visiting many reputable museums and societies. Some of his biographers believe he took this tour to avoid being drafted into the war. During this tour, Cope had a love affair with a unnamed woman. His father strongly disapproved of this relationship and forced Edward to end it. Also during this European foray, Cope met another fellow American, Othniel Marsh, who was studying at the University of Berlin. The two men became friends and after Cope went back home, they stayed in touch with each other, exchanging papers, specimens and letters.
After returning to the States, Cope got a teaching job as the Professor of Zoology at Haverford College, Pennsylvania. In 1864 he married Annie Pim, a fellow Quaker and, two years later, had a daughter Julia. It was at this time that Cope described the first of many prehistoric animals, the prehistoric amphibian Amphibamus grandiceps (Cope, 1865).
Between 1866 and 1867, Cope travelled across America, exploring caves and pits. He resigned from his post as professor and sold the family farm in order to finance his research. From the caves and pits, he described new prehistoric animals such as the plesiosaur Elasmosaurus platyurus (Cope, 1868) and the dinosaur Laelaps (Cope, 1866) (subsequently renamed Dryptosaurus (Marsh, 1877) because Laelaps had already been used by a mite (Koch, 1836) but Cope refused to acknowledge the new name and continued using Laelaps, even naming new species).
The 1870s were a high point in Cope's academic career. Amongst his best known discoveries of this time are the mammal-like reptile Lystrosaurus (Cope, 1870), the crocodile-like reptile Champsosaurus (Cope, 1876) and potentially the largest dinosaur that ever lived Amphicoelias (Cope, 1878). Cope published between 25 and 76 papers each year. Unfortunately, this high volume of publications meant that Cope made many errors and had to print multiple corrections and redactions. This did not do his reputation any favours. It also didn't help that he mostly published his works in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society journal, a journal that was not widely read. Meanwhile, Marsh published very high-quality papers in the much more well-read American Journal of Science and his reputation skyrocketed.
Unfortunately, the 1870s also marked a low for Cope as his father, Alfred, died in 1875. This hit Cope hard as he was always close to his father, despite his father's reservations about his scientific career. He spent the rest of the decade writing up the findings of his earlier expeditions. He made another trip to Europe in 1878 and met with some of the greatest palaeontologists of the time including Richard Owen, Thomas Huxley, Ferdinand Hayden, Albert Guenther and Harry Seeley.
Cope is best known for his fierce rivalry with Othniel Marsh. This all started when Cope asked Marsh to examine his fossil of Elasmosaurus that he had discovered and reconstructed. Marsh informed Cope that he had, in fact, stuck the head on the end of the tail! The two argued back and forth for weeks about it until Cope asked his former mentor Joseph Leidy to have a look. Leidy took one glance at the skeleton, picked up the head and placed it at the other end. Cope was devastated because he had just published a paper describing Elasmosaurus with the incorrect drawing. It got worse when Leidy brought the issue to public knowledge during a meeting of the American Philosophical Society. Marsh just sat there looking smug. Cope was furious.
In 1877, American schoolteacher Arthur Lakes found a stash of fossil bones in Morrison, Colorado. He sent these bones to both Cope and Marsh. However, when Marsh agreed to pay Lakes $100 for his finds, Lakes asked Cope to forward the bones to Marsh. Cope was highly offended. Instead, Cope received bones from another schoolteacher Oramel Lucas from nearby Canyon City.
Shortly after this, both Cope and Marsh heard about a large boneyard at Como Bluff in Wyoming and sent collectors to the site. Both groups attempted to sabotage the others' progress with Cope offering to pay Marsh's men large sums of money if they defected and Marsh attempted to persuade Ferdinand Hayden, Cope's chief publisher, to reduce the number of papers of Cope's he approved. Marsh even had his dig sites dynamited so Cope couldn't dig there after they left!
In 1877, Cope returned from a trip to Europe to be greeted by two years' worth of bones found by Lucas. Amongst them were the remains of the dinosaur Camarasaurus (Cope, 1877). In 1879, the United States Congress assembled all the geological survey teams into one and appointed Clarence King as the leader. Cope was hopeful that he would be named chief palaeontologist so you can imagine his disappointment when King named Marsh to that position instead.
Then things got much worse in the 1880s. Marsh's role in the Survey gave him access to essentially unlimited resources. Cope, on the other hand, was running out of money. Fast. His good friend Ferdinand Hayden, who worked for the Survey, lost his position, and was unable to fund Cope's work. Instead Cope turned to mines, investing in a number of silver mines in New Mexico. For a while, this tied him over, but by 1886, he was forced to sell his stock as the mines closed down. In the same year, he took a teaching job at the University of Pennsylvania but it wasn't enough to satisfy him, so he looked for work elsewhere. Both the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History, both prestigious institutions, turned him down. Although offered to join the Survey, Cope refused because it meant working with Marsh and Marsh's buddy Colin Powell.
Marsh convinced Powell to force Cope to return all the specimens he had gathered as part of previous government surveys. Cope was outraged and refused on the grounds that he had been a volunteer on those surveys and not been an official employee and therefore the specimens he had found were his and not the government's. However, Cope decided it was time to fight back and he went to the editor of the New York Herald with a notepad in which he had recorded every mistake and accusation made against Marsh and Powell. This he had gathered from previous employees and consisted of claims of errors, employees being denied credit and being underpaid, to misappropriated government funds. Marsh and Powell both published rebuttals but it was in vain. Although no criminal proceedings were made against Marsh and Powell, their reputations suffered and as a result, Marsh was removed as chief palaeontologist and Powell had his funding cut significantly.
However, Cope's own reputation and friendships became strained as well. But he didn't particularly care. In fact, he even named a species of prehistoric mammal after his haters Conacodon cophater (Cope, 1884). He then went on to name two of the most important fossils of his career, the mammal-like reptile Edaphosaurus (Cope, 1882) and the dinosaur Coelophysis (Cope, 1889). In 1889, his good friend Joseph Leidy passed away and Cope succeeded him as Professor of Zoology at the University of Pennsylvania. This increase in pay allowed Cope to buy back the family farm that he previously had to sell.
Then, in 1892, fortune struck Cope. He was offered a position with the Texas Geological Survey to conduct field work. With the extra money generated from this he was able to publish two huge books that had he had been working on for years: Batrachians of North America, about North American amphibians and The Crocodilians Lizards and Snakes of North America, about...well, the title is pretty self-explanatory really. In 1894, his daughter, Julia married an astronomy professor, William Collins. Together they moved to Haverford, Pennsylvania, and afterwards so did Cope's wife, Annie. Cope stayed in Philadelphia, his reasoning being that he did not wish to commute, although his pupil, Henry Osborn (the guy who described Tyrannosaurus) later reported that the two had separated by this point, although they remained amicable towards each other.
Cope's final act before his death was to sell his collections in 1895. His fossil mammal collection, with 10,000 specimens, sold for $32,000, whilst the rest of his 13,000 specimens sold for $29,000. With this extra money, he was able to rehire fossil collectors, including the great Charles Sternberg, with the aim of starting a fresh, new career in palaeontology.
By 1896, Cope was ill. Very ill. He was bedridden with a severe gastrointestinal illness which he said was cystitis. He was looked after by his wife, who came up from Haverford, and his secretary Anna Brown, when his wife was unable to. He prescribed himself medicines composed of morphine, belladonna (a poison derived from the Deadly Nightshade) and formalin (a chemical similar to formaldehyde). When Osborn visited him and discovered what Cope was doing, Osborn convinced him to stop and undergo surgery instead. Arrangements were subsequently made but were then cancelled after Cope showed improvement. Cope, feeling better, travelled to Virginia to look for more fossils but fell ill again and returned home. On 5 April 1897, Osborn visited again but Cope didn't want to talk about his health and instead wanted to have a discussion on the origins of mammals. Over the next few days, other friends visited but again, Cope wanted to have academic debates and not talk about his condition, despite developing a severe fever. Then, on 12 April 1897, Cope passed away at the age of 56. His funeral was a small affair, with a Quaker ceremony and 6 people in attendance. However, he wasn't buried as he had his body donated to science and it still resides at the University of Pennsylvania. His cause of death is still unknown.
See also:
More dinosaurs
More on Amphicoelias fragillimus and other large dinosaurs
Richard Owen
References
Cope, E. (1865) 'On Amphibamus grandiceps, a new Batrachian from the Coal Measures: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1865, pp. 134-137
Cope, E. (1866) 'On the remains of a gigantic extinct dinosaur, from the Cretaceous Green Sand of New Jersey', Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 18, pp. 275-279
Cope, E. (1868) 'Remarks on a new enaliosaurian, Elasmosaurus platyurus', Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 20, pp. 92-93
Cope, E. (1870) 'On the skull of dicynodont Reptilia. Lystrosaurus frontosus from Cape Colony', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 11, p. 419
Cope, E. (1876) 'On some extinct reptiles and Batrachia from the Judith River and Fox Hills Beds of Montana', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 28, pp. 340-359
Cope, E. (1877) 'On a gigantic saurian from the Dakota epoch of Colorado', Palaeontological Bulletin, 25, pp. 5-10
Cope, E. (1878) 'On the Vertebrata of the Dakota Epoch of Colorado', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 17 (100), pp. 233-247
Cope, E. (1882) 'Third contribution to the History of the Vertebrata of the Permian Formation of Texas', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 20, pp. 447-474
Cope, E. (1884) 'Second addition to the the knowledge of the Puerco Eocene epoch', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 21, pp. 309-324
Cope, E. (1889) 'On a new genus of Triassic Dinosauria', The American Naturalist, 23, p. 626
Koch, C. (1836) Deutschlands Crustaceen, Myriapoden und Arachniden, Regensberg: F. Pustet
Marsh, O. (1877) 'Notice of a new and gigantic dinosaur', American Journal of Science and Arts, 14, pp. 87-88
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