The Bone Wars – Fighting Over The Remains of The Past

The Bone Wars – Fighting Over the Remains of the Past

By Mr Ghaz, December 10, 2009

http://u.nu/3y374

The Bone Wars – Fighting Over the Remains of the Past

Image via Wikipedia

The strangest and longest battle of the American West was fought not between early settlers and Indians but between two collectors of fossils. The Bone Wars, as the bitter clash became known, raged in the shadow of remote cliffs, in desert encampments, in university laboratories, and on the pages of academic journals.

http://u.nu/24474

On one side was Othniel Charles Marsh, professor of paleontology at Yale University. A wealthy collector of fossils since childhood, he would stop at nothing to secure rare specimens for his collection. On the other side was Edward Drinker Cope, a naturalist from Philadelphia – also rich and determined. Although the West was littered with dinosaur bones, both men jealously guarded their own excavations and vied for the honor of being the first to describe a new species.

A Battle of Wits

http://u.nu/43474

No one knows exactly when the hostilities began-perhaps when Cope invaded what Marsh considered to be his territory in Kansas in 1871, or maybe when Marsh ridiculed Cope for assembling the skeleton of an aquatic lizard, Elasmosaurus platyurus, back-to-front.

http://u.nu/84474

By 1872, when the two met in the Bridger Basin of Wyoming, war had been declared between them. Marsh claimed that he had the exclusive right to dig at the site, but Cope ignored him, hired the only local guide not in his rival’s pay, and set to work.

http://u.nu/33474

Marsh’s men laid false trails for Cope and spent hours digging in spots where they knew there were no bones. One time, certain that Cope was watching them, the men planted a broken fragment of skull and a few teeth for him to find. Cope fell for the bait, and declared that the bone and teeth, which actually came from different creatures, were the remains of a hitherto undiscovered species.

http://u.nu/7y374

Coded telegrams flew from west to east as the prehistoric graveyards yielded their riches. Academic papers announcing new discoveries were hurriedly written and rushed to the printer, only to have the date of each find routinely disputed. Guards were posted at important sites; spies lurked behind piles of recently unearthed spoils; and assistants were enticed from rival camps with irresistible offers of higher pay.

http://u.nu/2d474

The results were not positive for the science of paleontology. One witness to the hostilities, pioneer paleontologist Joseph Leidy, gave up his research into fossil vertebrates in favor of less contentious fields of study. In addition, the speed with which the warring camps published their findings created confusion about the names some of the unearthed fossils had been given.

http://u.nu/98474

Eventually, the private feud became public knowledge. Cope charged Marsh with hoarding fossils owned by the government and with plagiarizing the work of his assistants by taking credit for their findings. Marsh replied with equal vehemence, accusing Cope of theft and ignorance.

http://u.nu/5c474

The Rivalry Ends

http://u.nu/62474

Only with Cope’s death in 1897 did the Bone Wars finally end. Marsh survived his enemy by less than two years. Both men died poor: Cope had lost his fortune in a mining fraud; Marsh had spent $200,000 in pursuit of fossils.

http://u.nu/8z374

Yet despite the undignified rivalry that marred the reputation of each (prompting one of Marsh’s assistants to refer to both rivals as “big men with little heads”), the achievements of the “bone warriors” are undisputed. Cope described more than 1.200 species or genera of fossil vertebrates from North America, and Marsh discovered more than 500. Many of the meticulously reconstructed dinosaur skeletons in museums throughout the word today are their legacy.