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Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope: Dinosaur Prospectors
| Article
# : |
14921 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1988 |
3,336 Words |
| Author
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Dwight G. Smith
Dwight G. Smith is professor and chairman of the biology
department at Southern Connecticut State University in New
Haven. His latest book, Plants, was released this summer by
Pearson Publishing Company of Boston. |
The two greatest dinosaur hunters in history were Othniel C. Marsh of Yale University and Edward Drinker Cope of the University of Pennsylvania. One hundred years ago these men "prospected" throughout many of the deserts, mountains, and prairies of the still-wild American West for dinosaur bones and other fossils. They endured incredible hardships, often hostile Indians, and equally hostile encounters with one another over dinosaur claims. At least one of these disputes was settled by a fistfight.
When Marsh and Cope began, the ancient world of dinosaurs was almost unknown except to a few scientists who were studying the giant lizard bones recently unearthed in Europe. By the time death stopped their work, they had discovered hundreds of dinosaurs and described a previously unimagined world of monsters millions of years old. Their fossil finds buttressed the then-controversial theory of evolution and enhanced the international reputation of American science and scientists. When mounted for display, the dinosaur skeletons they collected became the showpieces of museums, helping to stimulate public interest in both museums and natural history.
Their mania for collecting dinosaur remains spawned a bitter, personal feud that spilled into the newspapers and scientific journals of the day and still ranks as one of the epic feuds in the history of science.
Othniel C. Marsh
Marsh was born in 1831 in Lockport, New York, the son of a failed merchant turned farmer and the nephew of the fabulously rich George Peabody, America's first self-made multimillionaire. His mother died when he was three years old, and he was raised by a stepmother and assorted aunts and uncles. Most of Marsh's boyhood was spent in the drudgery of dawn-to-dusk labor on his father's small farm. His happiest hours were spent exploring the banks of the recently constructed Erie Canal with his father, an amateur rock and fossil collector.
At the late age of 21, Marsh entered Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, with a small cash settlement from the sale of his mother's dowry and some funds provided by his uncle. Marsh's first school year was passed mostly in hunting ducks and gaming. That summer he sorted the mineral collection at Essex Institute of Science in Salem and later haunted for minerals and fossils in New York and Massachusetts. Marsh also apparently took time to ponder his future, because he returned to school as a scholar who, as related by a
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