stay out of science – which evangelical creationist Edward Coleson calls ‘one of the most damaging pseudo-scientific myths to gain wide credence in the West in the last century or two’.
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COPE
vs
MARSH
FEUDING PARTIES
Edward Drinker Cope (1840–97) – palaeontologist
vs
Othniel Charles Marsh (1831–99) – palaeontologist
DATE
1860s–90s
CAUSE OF FEUD
Priority over discovery of fossils (aka the ‘bone war’)
The ‘bone war’ between Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh was the most notorious and damaging feud of its age, a Greek tragedy of hubris and nemesis, of two men locked together by obsession until one of them, goaded beyond endurance, unleashed the furies of public disgrace, bringing ruin upon both their heads. It was also a clash of personal ideologies that somehow embodied the late 19th-century battle for the soul of America, of individualism vs imperialism, libertarianism vs the establishment, anarchy vs order, a clash that would shape the settlement of the West.
A palaeontological education
Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh both came from money but their backgrounds and education were subtly different. Cope came from a genteel Quaker background and was schooled in the liberal tradition of a bygone age, touring the academic institutions of Europe during the Civil War. Marsh was older but began his schooling and career later, only beginning in earnest when his rich uncle George Peabody started to fund him; his education was more conventional and his career would later reflect this.
The two men had conflicting personalities and personalities suited to conflict. Marsh was not a naturally social creature; a college acquaintance observed that: ‘for most people it was “like running against a pitchfork to get acquainted with him”.’ Meanwhile an acquaintance of Cope’s, palaeontologist E.C. Case, wrote of him: ‘he was essentially a fighting man, expressing his energy in encountering mental, rather than physical difficulties ... He met honest opposition with a vigour honouring his foe, but fraternized cordially after the battle.’
The two men met for the first time in 1863. David Rains Wallace, author of the key text on the feud, The Bonehunters’ Revenge, suggests that even then they probably ‘felt a nascent rivalry ... Their disparate backgrounds predisposed them to look down, subtly, on each other. The patrician Edward may have considered Marsh not quite a gentleman. The academic Othniel probably regarded Cope as not quite a professional.’ Cope’s freewheeling, individualist style contrasted with what Wallace calls the ‘calm, methodical careerism’ of Marsh, who quickly scaled the greasy pole of the scientific establishment.
‘Professor Marsh’s Primeval Troupe’ A cartoon from Punch, 1890, showing Othniel Charles Marsh’s ‘perfect mastery over the ceratopsidae’. Surveying his finds, prolific American fossil hunter Marsh stands astride the skull of a triceratops, considering two reconstructions he would have supervised – or at least claimed credit for.
‘See the bones roll out’
Both men had conceived a passion for fossils, and were to become the greatest fossil hunters of their – and arguably any other – age. Awareness of fossils had gathered pace since the early 19th century and the end of the American Civil War, and the opening up of the American West, particularly the rampant growth of the railways, had set the stage for a blizzard of discoveries (see box, page 54). Cope and Marsh would be at the forefront of these developments. Scientific renown, even glory, was at stake for those who could find, reconstruct, describe and name new species, but what truly drove them was something dark and atavistic: an insatiable hunger to possess. Each man would eventually amass vast collections; in Marsh’s case, at least, far more than he could adequately process.
At first there seems to have been a degree of cordiality, even cooperation, between the two men, but avarice soon overcame concord. Cope himself traced the beginning of their feud to 1868, claiming that he had taken Marsh on a tour of the New Jersey fossil beds, but that ‘soon after, in endeavouring to obtain fossils from these localities, I found everything closed to me and pledged to Marsh for money considerations.’ Marsh’s financial clout (he was backed by his uncle’s massive fortune, via the Peabody Museum at Yale) and political nous would increasingly enable him to ‘reserve’ fertile fossil sites as his private preserves.
Other reports date the start of the feud to an earlier incident in 1866, when Marsh published a report correcting an incorrect reconstruction of an elasmosaurus by Cope. The geologist Walter Wheeler, however, points to the summer of 1872, when both men were collecting in Bridger Basin, Wyoming; it appears it was at this time that their competitiveness boiled over into antagonism. The following year Marsh wrote to Cope to complain about his behaviour in Wyoming: ‘The information I received ... made me very angry, and ... I was so mad ... I should have “gone for you”, not with pistols or fists, but in print ... I was never so angry in my life.’ Cope’s response? ‘All the specimens you obtained during August 1872 you owe to me.’
Their row grew to encompass arguments over access to fossils, accusations of deliberate destruction, attempts to hijack collections and bitter and complicated feuding over priority when it came to publishing descriptions of specimens. Marsh quickly retired from front-line collecting, hiring proxies to do the work (but claiming all the credit); Cope, without the funds or the institutional backing of his rival, was still in the field when the conflict reached its apogee at Como Bluff in Wyoming, one of the richest fossil sites in the world.
In 1877, each man was alerted to the site by different sources. Marsh’s proxies resorted to code words and deception to throw Cope off the scent. His assistant Samuel Williston wrote to Marsh that the bones ‘extend for seven miles and are by the ton.’ Another assistant, William Harlow Reed, wrote to a colleague, capturing the excitement of the pursuit: ‘I wish you were here to see the bones roll out and they are beauties ... it would astonish you to see the holes we have dug.’
TIMELINE
Leg and foot bones of a diplodocus, in situ, where they were discovered at Como Bluff. Remains of the diplodocus were first discovered here in 1878, and the genus was named by Marsh.
Cope was not to be denied, and soon rival camps were eyeing each other suspiciously across the site. There should have been plenty to go round, but stories abound of the depths to which the two men sank. Supposedly, Marsh ordered some dinosaur pits to be dynamited to prevent Cope from acquiring specimens, and later resorted to ‘salting’ Cope’s excavations with random fossils that did not belong there, to obstruct his reconstructions. Cope allegedly responded by having a trainload of Marsh’s findings diverted to Philadelphia. Tensions mounted and on at least one occasion guns were pulled. Wallace describes Como as ‘more like one of the