of the break is in question {the two men had originally been friends}, it probably came in a dispute over the fossil beds of Haddonfield, New Jersey, where the first American dinosaur had been discovered in 1858. At the time, Cope was living in Haddonfield and collecting specimens in the area. In the spring of 1868, Cope showed Marsh around the various quarries. Not long afterwards, Cope later alleged, Marsh paid off the quarry owners, and Cope suddenly found the quarries closed to him and open to Marsh. The rivalry intensified, although still on a professional level, when Cope reconstructed an Elasmosaurus skeleton and erroneously placed the skull on the end of the tail. *13 Marsh lost no time rushing a correction into print, in which he jokingly said that Cope should have named the animal Streptosaurus, meaning "twisted reptile." The article must surely have embarrassed and galled Cope.
In 1871, however, Cope turned the tables, and began digging in one of Marsh's fossil localities in Kansas {after hiring away one of his assistants}. Similar incidents followed, with both Marsh and Cope luring each other's collectors away with more money; often, these collectors came with proprietary secrets about the location and extent of fossil beds. {Marsh and Cope did little of the actual collecting themselves. Instead, they hired and directed collecting parties.} In 1872 and 1873, in a nasty exchange of letters, Cope and Marsh accused each other of stealing specimens. Marsh also accused Cope of fudging the dates of publication of certain scientific articles, thus stealing credit for new discoveries away from Marsh. This question of dates was no trivial matter. The actual excavation of a new species meant little; it was the publication date of the report on the find that established to the scientific community who would get credit for the discovery. Often Cope and Marsh were making the same new discoveries, and thus the object of the race was to get into print first. Indeed, Cope even spent a large portion of his fortune buying a controlling interest in the journal American Naturalist, in order to rush his discoveries into print faster. Their scientific papers increasingly contained ad hominem attacks on each other, thinly disguised as "scientific criticism." "It is plain," Cope wrote in one paper, "that most of Prof. Marsh's criticisms are misrepresentations, his systematic innovations are untenable, and his statements as to the dates of my papers are either criminally ambiguous or untrue."
Before 1877, only scattered dinosaur remains had been found in England, western Europe, and America. But within a six-month period in 1877, three large dinosaur finds—culminating with the spectacular discovery of the vast fossil fields of Como Bluff, Wyoming—intensified the rivalry between Cope and Marsh, and greatly increased the scientific stakes. The find also served to popularize dinosaurs, and indirectly led the American Museum of Natural History into the arena of dinosaur collecting.
Marsh learned of this first major dinosaur find when he received a letter from a Colorado schoolmaster and geologist, Arthur Lakes, who wrote him of "some enormous bones ... of some gigantic saurian." Lakes enclosed a sketch.
At first, oddly enough, Marsh showed little interest in this letter and other letters that followed, some of which he didn't even bother to answer. But when Marsh learned that Lakes had then written to Cope, he immediately instructed his chief collector, Samuel Williston, to investigate the locality.
Coincidental1y, at about that same time, Cope had received a letter from another Colorado resident, informing him of a find of large bones in a different spot. When Marsh learned of this, he again sent Williston out to investigate. Williston soon reported that Cope's men were indeed excavating and shipping large dinosaurs back to Philadelphia.
The third and most significant discovery came in a letter to Marsh from two men calling
In 1871, however, Cope turned the tables, and began digging in one of Marsh's fossil localities in Kansas {after hiring away one of his assistants}. Similar incidents followed, with both Marsh and Cope luring each other's collectors away with more money; often, these collectors came with proprietary secrets about the location and extent of fossil beds. {Marsh and Cope did little of the actual collecting themselves. Instead, they hired and directed collecting parties.} In 1872 and 1873, in a nasty exchange of letters, Cope and Marsh accused each other of stealing specimens. Marsh also accused Cope of fudging the dates of publication of certain scientific articles, thus stealing credit for new discoveries away from Marsh. This question of dates was no trivial matter. The actual excavation of a new species meant little; it was the publication date of the report on the find that established to the scientific community who would get credit for the discovery. Often Cope and Marsh were making the same new discoveries, and thus the object of the race was to get into print first. Indeed, Cope even spent a large portion of his fortune buying a controlling interest in the journal American Naturalist, in order to rush his discoveries into print faster. Their scientific papers increasingly contained ad hominem attacks on each other, thinly disguised as "scientific criticism." "It is plain," Cope wrote in one paper, "that most of Prof. Marsh's criticisms are misrepresentations, his systematic innovations are untenable, and his statements as to the dates of my papers are either criminally ambiguous or untrue."
Before 1877, only scattered dinosaur remains had been found in England, western Europe, and America. But within a six-month period in 1877, three large dinosaur finds—culminating with the spectacular discovery of the vast fossil fields of Como Bluff, Wyoming—intensified the rivalry between Cope and Marsh, and greatly increased the scientific stakes. The find also served to popularize dinosaurs, and indirectly led the American Museum of Natural History into the arena of dinosaur collecting.
Marsh learned of this first major dinosaur find when he received a letter from a Colorado schoolmaster and geologist, Arthur Lakes, who wrote him of "some enormous bones ... of some gigantic saurian." Lakes enclosed a sketch.
At first, oddly enough, Marsh showed little interest in this letter and other letters that followed, some of which he didn't even bother to answer. But when Marsh learned that Lakes had then written to Cope, he immediately instructed his chief collector, Samuel Williston, to investigate the locality.
Coincidental1y, at about that same time, Cope had received a letter from another Colorado resident, informing him of a find of large bones in a different spot. When Marsh learned of this, he again sent Williston out to investigate. Williston soon reported that Cope's men were indeed excavating and shipping large dinosaurs back to Philadelphia.
The third and most significant discovery came in a letter to Marsh from two men calling
Similar Books
