Page 64 - All About History 58 - 2017 UK

Bone Wars

The age of
dinosaurs Wrong head
depicted in
One of Marsh’s most notable finds
a Victorian
magazine was the igantic Apatosaurus. Here,
however, Marsh had placed the head
of a Brachiosaurus on an Apatosaurus
skeleton and named it Brontosaurus, a
mistake Cope revelled in publicising.

Too many toes
This specimen had splayed
toes with too many claws,
perhaps a result of the
widespread belief dinosaurs
were more related to
modern-day reptiles than
they’ve turned out to be.

g
bl d
g g l
Of course, Cope took this as a grievous insult and resul lting in regular irreparable damage to
urse Copetook thisasa grievous insult and
Of
it only spurred him into further action. invaluable fossils, hostilities between the camps
Shortly after, Cope received correspondence escalated dangerously.
The teams would regularly sabotage each other’s
from neighbouring Canon City in Colorado and
subsequently discovered bones from gigantic camps and dig sites, and small skirmishes would
break out, with men throwing rocks at each other.
herbivores, dinosaurs larger than any Marsh had
described so far — a point of great pride to Cope. Explosives were even used to destroy used dig
Marsh, not one to be outdone, ordered a quarry sites in order to prevent the ‘enemy’ from making
potential further discoveries; little regard was paid
to be set up as close as possible to Cope’s dig, but
after a fruitless pursuit of superior fossils there, to smaller fossils by this point.
Both Marsh and Cope now joined the digs in
and a near-fatal accident for Marsh’s assistants in person but their seemingly bottomless disdain for
Morrison, he took his battalion of dinosaur hunters each other led to a surging wave of dissatisfaction
elsewhere — Como Bluff, Wyoming.
As the Transcontinental Railroad was being built among their respective teams. While Marsh’s
through remote parts of Wyoming, news spread team soon suffered from mass resignations and
of rich fossil fields in the area. Marsh was the first in-fighting, Cope’s was quickly running out of The determined Othniel Charles Marsh
to take advantage, quickly striking deals with money to fund his resource-heavy expedition. got the better of Edward Cope, but at
By the late 1880s, Cope was all but bankrupt,
great personal and professional cost
teams of explorers and workers to make sure they with Marsh not much better off himself. They had
wouldn‘t turn to Cope. discovered over 130 new dinosaur species between
The results from these digs would turn out to be
history-defining; among the finds in Como Bluff them, with Marsh having named 80 dinosaurs,
while Cope’s tally stood at 56. Marsh had ‘won’ the
were fossils of what would become some of the Bone Wars, but at a great personal and professional
most famous dinosaur species in history. These
included Stegosaurus, Allosaurus and Apatosaurus, cost to them both.
Forced to spend their laters relying on donations
among a number of other notable finds.
Having been beaten to the punch yet again, of fossils from third parties, they increasingly
Cope now resorted to desperate tactics. Sending spent their discrediting each other via academic
‘dinosaur rustlers’ to the area, he attempted to publications. In particular, Cope finally got his
covertly steal fossils from Marsh’s site. payback for the Elasmosaurus debacle. Cope
After one of Marsh’s main expedition leaders, discovered that Marsh had made a grave error in Edward Drinker
Cope was a
Carlin, decided to defect over to Cope’s site, things his assembly of a complete Apatosaurus, passionate scientist
quickly took an ugly turn. On top of rapidly as its head turned out to belong to a but his temper and
rashness often got
expanding digs, often conducted haphazardly, Brontosaurus, an unrelated herbivore. him in trouble

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