A fine and dramatic rendering of the Marsh-Cope paleontological
imbroglio, played out in the pages of the New York Herald, from
Wallace (The Monkey's Bridge: Mysteries of Evolution in Central
America, 1997, etc.). Professors O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope had been
squabbling over their old bones for years before the Herald decided
to inflate and sensationalize the feud in a bid to win their
circulation war with the New York World. Both paleontologista were
eminent in their own way: Marsh taught at Yale, advised presidenta,
was a protege of congressmen, and had a sheaf of discoveries to his
credit; Cope was the more imaginative, if more reckless, of the
two, and had a equal number of superb fossil finds under his belt.
At first, the rivalry was quaint: "The patrician Edward may have
considered Marsh not quite a gentleman. The academic Othniel
probably regarded Copeas not quite a professional." Wallace tells
the story with enthusiasm and relish as the professorial
beard-pulling got out of hand. Cope claimed Marsh stole fossils and
ideas; Marsh counterclaimed Cope was a crank and a fool who put
dinosaur heads on the wrong end of the beast. But when Marsh used
his political power to freeze Cope out of the fossil lands, Cope
engaged a hack to smear Marsh in the Herald. The paper's publisher,
the nefarious James Gordon Bennett Jr., played the scientists like
stringed instruments until both crashed in an embarrassment of
accusations. More's the pity, as Wallace notes, as their work
demonstrating "evolutionary transitions linking mammalian humanity
to the transmutational continuum" was overshadowed, and the public
feud "smashed John Wesley Powell's farsighted attempt to develop
the West in sustainable fashion," as Powell's (the first chief of
the US Geographical Survey) reputation was severely damaged in the
Herald's pages. An ugly little episode that typified "ah age so
greedy that men fought over petrified bones." (Kirkus Reviews)
When dinosaur fossils were first discovered in the Wild West, they sparked one of the greatest scientific battles in American history. Over the past century it has been known by many names -- the Bone War, the Fossil Feud -- but the tragic story of the competition for fame and natural treasure between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, two leading paleontologists of the Gilded Age, remains prophetic of the conquest of the West as well as a watershed event in science. With a historian's eye and a novelist's skill, David Rains Wallace charts in fascinating detail the unrestrained rivalry between Cope and Marsh and their obsession to become the first to make available to the world the abundant, unknown fossils of the western badlands. This story will surely fascinate anyone who has had to confront the myriad facets of professional jealousy, its sterile brooding, and how it leads to an emotional abyss.
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