Dinosaur hunter Edward Drinker Cope studied briefly at Penn in his youth BONEand ended his WARRIORdays as a faculty member at the University. In between, the impulsive and driven scholar churned out more than 1,400 scientific publications— and exchanged many harsh words—in an epic battle with his more methodical rival, Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale, for primacy in the nascent field of paleontology. BY DENNIS DRABELLE ard on the heels of the California precocious Edward found himself drawn of 18 he had a part-time job there. A year Gold Rush and the Comstock to the natural sciences in a favorable later, he racked up his first scholarly H Lode Silver Rush came the place and time—Philadelphia was a sci- publication, and not even his father’s Great Plains Bone War. At stake in the entific mecca, newly discovered fossils gift of a farm could dissuade the young Bone War were dinosaur fossils, not ore, were adding years by the tens of mil- man from pursuing a scientific career. but what the struggle lacked in glitter it lions to the Earth’s age, and Darwin was In either 1860-61 or 1861-62 (the evidence made up for in intensity and vitriol, sup- honing his theory of evolution in is ambiguous), he attended Penn, where plied by two paleontologists locked in advance of its release—but Alfred had he is known to have studied comparative bitter rivalry: Othniel Charles Marsh, a a different future mapped out for his anatomy with the famous Joseph Leidy longtime professor at Yale, and Edward son: gentleman farmer. Edward attend- M1844, professor of anatomy and found- Drinker Cope, an independent scholar ed a Quaker day school and then board- er and head of the Department of Biol- who in his last years taught at Penn. ed at Westtown School near West Ches- ogy at the University. Cope’s formal edu- Marsh and Cope’s drawn-out race to ter, Pennsylvania. Writing home to his cation ended at this point, though with- unearth, describe, classify, and claim parents, the 12-year-old schoolboy mar- out adverse effect on his progress. To his intellectual property rights to dinosaurs shaled cunning, charm, and self-knowl- job at the ANS he added one as a research- was characterized by spying, dirty tricks, edge in a way that could hardly have er in herpetology at the Smithsonian turncoats, and mutual accusations in failed to get him what he wanted: “that Institution in Washington. the gutter press. Today dinosaurs are the Quarter dollar is not gone by any means, His father sent Edward off to the safe- domesticated stuff of kids’ fantasies; a I only begin to ask soon, as I thought ty of Europe for what proved to be the century-and-a-half ago, the beasts drove some more might be hard to get … for last two years of the Civil War. The young grown men to act like children. when a boy is hungry money is nothing, man used his freedom to immerse him- Edward Drinker Cope sprang from the food must be had.” self more deeply in science. It was during Philadelphia establishment: his Quak- When in Philadelphia, Cope frequent- this period, Marsh later recalled, that er father, Alfred, was co-owner of a pros- ed the Academy of Natural Sciences, the future combatants first met, in Ber- perous shipping firm. Born in 1840, the becoming such a fixture that by the age lin—and hit it off. At the time, according 62 MARCH | APRIL 2017 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE ILLUSTRATIONS BY DAVID HOLLENBACH THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE MARCH | APRIL 2017 63 to Mark Jaffe in his book The Gilded up his findings and submitted them to and teeth had been overlooked, that they Dinosaur: The Fossil War Between E.D. the American Philosophical Society, went together, and that he’d found a new Cope and O.C. Marsh and the Rise of which had printed and disseminated dinosaur species, which he duly wrote American Science, Marsh “had two uni- advance copies. Cope scurried to retrieve up. Later it came out that he’d been versity degrees, but only two published these, but a few got away. tricked. One of Marsh’s Yale colleagues, scientific papers. While Cope had no Over the years, Marsh kept Cope’s error James Dwight Dana, called Cope “a man degrees, he had already published thirty- alive by dragging it into almost every phase of great learning & ability and were he seven scientific papers.” of their burgeoning feud—the scholarly not in so burning haste would always do Back home in 1865, Cope landed a equivalent of poking a sore. (Ultimately, splendid work.” teaching position at Haverford College, however, Marsh made what was arguably Kansas was also the site of the feud’s a Quaker institution, probably thanks a worse mistake: he matched a dinosaur ugly nadir. Years after the event, the to string-pulling by his dad. In 1866, body with the wrong head, thereby bollix- paleontologist Samuel Williston, who Edward was elected a member of the ing up the taxonomy of two species.) had defected from Marsh’s team to American Philosophical Society, whose Cope’s, wrote Cope a letter of confession. journal became a favorite venue for his With the American West opened up by Marsh had ordered the destruction of paleontological articles, some of them the transcontinental railroad in 1869, certain fossil fields—in one instance by on an early specialty of his: fossil fish. Cope and Marsh began making summer setting off dynamite—to keep Cope from The young professor married a distant forays to the fossil fields of Kansas, having a go at them, and Williston had cousin, Annie Pim; their only child, a Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and else- carried out one of these orders. “It is daughter, was born in 1866. After Cope where, typically as advisers to federal necessary for me to say,” he concluded, gave up his teaching post in 1867, the fam- geological surveys. They soon clashed “I only despised him for it.” ily moved to Haddonfield, New Jersey, to over issues of territory and primacy. Other colleagues and agents fell out be near local fossil deposits in which he’d As Keith Thomson explains in The Leg- with Marsh, too, sometimes over his hog- already discovered what was only the sec- acy of the Mastodon: The Golden Age of ging of credit, sometimes over his slow- ond known American dinosaur skeleton Fossils in America, by the mid-19th cen- ness in paying their salaries. But it would (the first had been found by Leidy). Cope’s tury North America had earned a reputa- be wrong to depict Marsh as an out-and- farm was making money, which his father tion as “a huge open textbook for the dis- out knave. Much to his credit, he stood supplemented with infusions of cash. covery of the geological structure of the up for the Sioux when they were being Marsh, meanwhile, had joined the fac- earth and its ancient inhabitants.” The cheated by unscrupulous federal Indian ulty of Yale, his alma mater—a tie that book was huge and open, all right, but also agents. While working nearby deposits, strengthened when his rich uncle donat- divided into far-flung chapters, making Marsh learned of the corruption from ed the money for what became Yale’s fossil-bearing strata coveted workplaces. Red Cloud himself and promised to bring Peabody Museum of Natural History. Even by train, travel to a promising locale it up with President Grant. Marsh kept The first hitch in the Cope-Marsh friend- was costly and time-consuming, as were that promise, pressing the case so hard ship occurred in 1867, when Marsh got preserving, packing, and shipping fossils that both the commissioner of Indian his hands on the remains of an ancient back East for study. Just as a prospector affairs and his boss, the secretary of the aquatic lizard from a New Jersey dig. He for gold or silver would call dibs on the interior, had to resign. named it Mosasaurus copeanus, but the area of his strike, so paleontologists devel- honor failed to assuage Cope’s sense of oped a first-on-the-scene possessiveness. lfred Cope died in 1875, leaving being scooped in his own backyard. The difference was that while the miner Edward roughly a quarter of a A year later, Cope made a costly blun- had recourse to laws that would protect Amillion dollars (about $5.4 mil- der. An army surgeon in Kansas sent the his investment and effort, the scientist did lion today). This allowed him to mount disarticulated skeleton of a “sea serpent” not. If Paleontologist A digs into a hillside his own expeditions without subordinat- to the ANS. Cope put the creature togeth- and Paleontologist B comes along, what ing himself to government surveyors. er literally ass-backwards, giving it an were the ethics? How much clearance was It was at this flush moment that Charles extremely long tail when, in fact, it had A entitled to? There were no easy answers Sternberg came along. As a teenager, had an extremely long neck. When Marsh to such questions. Sternberg had explored the badlands of came to town, Cope invited him to have The methodical Marsh went to work western Kansas, where the family had a look. Marsh noticed the mistake and in Kansas and Wyoming but was slow to moved from upstate New York so that pointed it out. Cope stood his ground, publish his findings. The speedy Cope the father, a minister, could run a Luther- and Leidy was called in to referee.