Off the Wall: Jurrasic Farts
The Men Who Went to War Over Dinosaurs: The Failed Friendship of Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh
The Men Who Went to War Over Dinosaurs: The Failed Friendship of Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh
(The Odd Historian) - Society has, since the conception of dinosaurs, been enthralled by our not-so-scaly, large predecessors, whom we now excavate the remains of and place alongside great works. Yes, and even with all of the attention literature, cinema, and other forms of media have brought forth for it, the art and history of paleontology is still often ignored or forgotten.
Unfortunately for me, this is an inconsistency as I, for a long time and even somewhat now, wished to have studied paleontology. There is just so much to learn about dinosaurs and the many shenanigans that their study brought, how could I resist? But, as much as I wish to draw on their existence and the many species and fantastical traits they may have had, that is not the focus of this article. Instead, I want to touch on the story of one of the greatest battles of scientific history: The Bone Wars.
The American West of the 1870s was in the middle of a major rebrand. The Civil War was over, the transcontinental railroad had been completed, and the great frontier, in all its expanse, was finally accessible. Geologists, surveyors and government expeditions began to fan out across the great unknowns, mapping terrain that no scientist had meaningfully documented before. What they kept finding, jutted out of the badlands and riverbeds of the expanse, were…
