Society has, since the conception of dinosaurs, been enthralled by our not-so-scaly, large predecessors, whom we now excavate the remains of and place alongside great works. Yes, and even with all of the attention literature, cinema, and other forms of media have brought forth for it, the art and history of paleontology is still often ignored or forgotten.
Unfortunately for me, this is an inconsistency as I, for a long time and even somewhat now, wished to have studied paleontology. There is just so much to learn about dinosaurs and the many shenanigans that their study brought, how could I resist? But, as much as I wish to draw on their existence and the many species and fantastical traits they may have had, that is not the focus of this article. Instead, I want to touch on the story of one of the greatest battles of scientific history: The Bone Wars.
The American West of the 1870s was in the middle of a major rebrand. The Civil War was over, the transcontinental railroad had been completed, and the great frontier, in all its expanse, was finally accessible. Geologists, surveyors and government expeditions began to fan out across the great unknowns, mapping terrain that no scientist had meaningfully documented before. What they kept finding, jutted out of the badlands and riverbeds of the expanse, were bones. Prehistoric, fantastical bones, unlike any they had ever seen.
The timing was not accidental. Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species had been published in 1859, and science was still metabolizing its implications. Fossils were no longer obsolete remnants not worth the effort of digging up, they had become a pivotal piece of science serving as proof of existence. Every new set of bones pulled from the earth was added to the portfolio of the Western existential crisis caused by Darwin’s work a few years prior. So Paleontology was, loosely, born overnight, becoming one of the most consequential scientific disciplines on the planet. It had also become one of the most competitive.
Into this field step two men with the funding, credentials, and ambition to define it in its entirety—armed with the egos to ensure the other was never left unbested.
Edward Drinker Cope was a difficult man to ignore. Born in 1840 to a wealthy Quaker family in Philadelphia, he was an uncomfortable prodigy, publishing his first scientific paper at the youthful age of eighteen. He corresponded with the leading naturalists of his day and carried an energy that bordered on the pathological. Despite the lofty focus on academia, he was also said to have been a charming and kind individual, which makes what follows much more interesting. Cope was not a villain, but he most definitely could seem to be one when in second place.
Then came, what is arguably, Cope’s opposite—Othniel Charles Marsh. Where Cope was impulsive and prolific, Marsh was a man of institution. Born in 1831 in Lockport, New York, Marsh had much less of a wealthy inheritance, but bore the ability of considerable patience. His uncle, the philanthropist George Peabody, had funded the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History on the condition that Marsh be appointed its first professor of Paleontology, a position that not only gave him the resources needed to advance his studies, but also the legitimacy to back it. Marsh knew that science was much more than discovery. It was also about the narrative that holds it. He was slow, deliberate and ruthless when it came to that.
The two men first met in Berlin, 1863, both studying abroad and moving amongst the same scientific circles, and by all accounts were, what I would call, good friends. Cope named a species after Marsh, Mosasaurus marshii, a fine gesture of professional goodwill. Marsh returned the favor. In retrospect, it is quite sad that two of the most gifted paleontologists of their generation’s bromance would soon be cut down by their own undoing. Yes, I called it a bromance, sue me.
The fracture, when it came, arrived in quite the form. In 1868, Cope had reconstructed the skeleton of the marine reptile, Elasmosaurus, and had published his findings with great speed and enthusiasm. Marsh, upon reviewing Cope’s work, had found a fatal flaw: Cope had placed the skull on the entirely wrong side of the body. He made sure this mistake did not go unnoticed. Cope rushed to buy back and destroy every copy of his published paper, but his efforts were to no avail. What had been a collegial rivalry became, in that moment, an entirely new thing. And, within a decade, all hell would let loose.
The starting bell rang in 1877. A schoolteacher named Arthur Lakes had discovered enormous fossil bones near Morrison, Colorado, and word spread quickly that the American West was sitting on a scientific treasure trove. Lakes contracted Marsh, who moved fast to dispatch collectors and ensure the security of the site with great efficiency. A separate site, located near Canon City, only 118 miles away, found its way to Cope. Just like that, both men had their feet on the ground and absolutely no intention of minding their business.
What followed was a prolonged logistical arms race across some of the most inhospitable terrain in North America. Both men hired collectors and, in a short time, were paying off the other’s crew for information. When one finished excavating a chunk of their respective site, the other planned sabotage, dynamiting, stealing, the works. While destroying one another(literally), they published works at reckless speeds, racing to name species before the other could, producing a cascade of faulty information and duplicate names that later paleontologists would spend decades untangling.
The conflict inevitably made its way to the press, with Cope publishing years of accumulated grievances against Marsh with the New York Herald in 1890. Marsh, of course, responded in kind. This continued for sometime—men throwing everything they had at one another in full view of the American public. By the time it was over, the human cost was considerable. Cope died in 1897 after having burnt through his entire inherited fortune, working out of a single bedroom in Philadelphia, surrounded by fossils he could no longer properly house. Marsh fared only marginally better, having passed nine years later to pneumonia. The grudge had consumed them both. Thoroughly, and without much remorse.
And, just like that, the Bone Wars ended just as fast as it began. Two men had spent twenty years feuding over an endless game of scandalous tag. Yes, it was messy, and it sure did cause a lot of trouble, but the science did survive. Between the two, Cope and Marsh discovered over 130 new species of dinosaurs, including some of the most iconic creatures in the paleontological canon—Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, Diplodicus. The bones they pulled from the American West fundamentally reshaped how humanity understood its own prehistory, and the museums that house them today have zero obligation to name the treachery that came in their wake.
What the Bone Wars ultimately illustrates is that, as amazing as ambition can be, the line between itself and pride can become quite narrow. Cope and Marsh arrived in the Badlands as scientists and left as adversaries who happened to dig up bones. Men so consumed by the desire to win that the work itself was secondary, risking progress becoming an accidental casualty. In some respects, it is a miracle that their work survived. Both men came to the edge of ruin, barely saved by their respected works prior to becoming mad men. The dinosaurs made it out. Cope and Marsh, barely.
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Did you Know?
Before Cope and Marsh began their rivalry, there were only nine named species of dinosaur in North America. Between them, their efforts led to 142 new species being discovered and described.
The scale of what Marsh produced did not go unnoticed beyond American shores. Marsh's fossil collection was described as "the best support of the theory of evolution" in a personal letter from Charles Darwin himself.
And Cope's brain still resides in a jar somewhere as Marsh never took him up on the bet to see who had the bigger brain, and thus superior intellect.
Dragons teeth by Crichton is great