They were rock star scholars—yet their epic public feud threatened to destroy both of their careers.
Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope were two of the 19th century’s most prolific bone hunters. They discovered more than a hundred dinosaurs between them—including Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Lystrosaurus—at the dawn of paleontology.
Although they both found fame and success, they hated each other for it. Their animosity devolved into an all-out war, and they used an arsenal of underhanded tactics to sabotage one another, including bribery, cheating, and defamation.
The men’s tactics may have been cold-blooded, but their so-called “Bone Wars” yielded scientific discoveries that helped shape paleontology as we know it.
Othniel Charles Marsh (back row, center), poses for a portrait with his 1872 expedition party. Marsh, who discovered 80 new species of dinosaurs, competed with fellow paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope in a period of frenzied Western American fossil hunting expeditions known as the “Bone Wars.”
Photograph by Alpha Historica, Alamy
Peace before the Bone Wars
Despite the mutual hatred that would come to define their relationship, Marsh and Cope started as friends.
Othniel Marsh was born in New York in 1831 to a family of modest means. Yet he had one significant family connection: His uncle was George Peabody, a fabulously wealthy entrepreneur who bankrolled his nephew’s education. The brilliant young scientist graduated from Yale and would hold the institution’s first chair in paleontology beginning in 1866.
If Marsh was born into a position of uncertainty, then Edward Cope entered the world in 1840 fully confident in his place within it. Cope’s family had wealth, standing, and connection in Philadelphia—and the only question he faced about his future was whether he could escape the path his family intended for him. His father wanted him to become a gentleman landowner; Edward wanted to become a scientist.
In 1863, Cope’s father sent him to Europe. In Berlin, he befriended a rising star in the field of natural sciences: Othniel Marsh. As young American scholars abroad, they likely bonded over their shared interest in paleontology, a relatively young academic field focused on the study of ancient fossils.
After their return to the United States, the two men exchanged letters and even named newly discovered species after each other. Cope anointed one species Ptyonius marshii; Marsh dubbed his own discovery Mosasaurus copeanus.
From friends to frenemies
There was a core issue, however. Paleontology was still nascent, and the field’s newness fueled a brewing competition between Marsh and Cope as they sought to anoint themselves its leader. The rush to stake their claim in the field pulled them apart.
Scholars have different theories as to what specific incident kickstarted their feud. Some say it began in 1868 when Marsh visited Cope on a fossil-finding expedition at a quarry in New Jersey. Marsh went behind Cope’s back to cut a deal with the quarry owners to deliver new fossils to him, not Cope.
Cope biographer Jane Davidson dated the feud to the same year, when Cope published a description of Elasmosaurus platyurus, a newly identified species. In reconstructing the creature, Cope made a serious error: He flipped the animal’s tail and neck.
After they was discovered in 1867, the bones of an Elasmosaurus were sent to paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. He named it Elasmosaurus platyurus—and mistakenly reconstructed its skeleton with the skull at the end of the tail, an error that his rival Othniel Charles Marsh wouldn’t let him forget.
Photograph by De Luan, Alamy
Marsh called out Cope and rubbed his colleague’s nose in the mistake. Humiliated, Cope scrambled to buy up copies of the journal that published his error. But it was too late—Marsh would never let Cope, or the scientific community, forget the blunder.
The feud heats up
The American West was fertile land for uncovering prehistoric fossils, but it wasn’t big enough for the two men. They rushed to rake up fossils and make greater discoveries than the other.
In 1871, Cope descended on a site in Kansas that Marsh’s team had recently abandoned. Cope’s dig yielded the skeleton of an ancient flying reptile—and it was bigger than the one Marsh had turned up. Cope delighted in the find; Marsh fumed.
As their war heated up, Marsh and Cope resorted to different methods to undermine one another, including accusations of plagiarism, spying, and rushing to out-publish each other. For good measure, Cope purchased the journal American Naturalist and used it as a forum to criticize Marsh and his work.
The rivalry escalated when they both maintained crews at dig sites in Como Bluff, Wyoming, from 1877 to 1879. Marsh even directed his crew to destroy any remaining bones at the site before they departed so that Cope couldn’t get them.
Political sabotage—and a highly public beef
Marsh took a job with the U.S. Geological Survey as its chief paleontologist in 1882. The plumb position gave Marsh the backing of the government to legitimize and support his work. It also meant that he would get plenty of funding––and Cope, lacking the right political connections, wouldn’t. The blow only worsened Cope’s already fragile financial health.
Worse news came on December 16, 1889, when John W. Noble, U.S. secretary of the interior, wrote a letter to Cope demanding that he relinquish his fossil collection and give it to the Smithsonian Institution. Since Cope had been working with a government agency at the time of their collection, Noble claimed, those fossils weren’t his.
Edward Drinker Cope was born to a wealthy family in 1840. Rather than become a gentleman landowner as his parents wished, he pursued the nascent field of paleontology—and contributed many significant discoveries to the field.
Photograph by Heritage Images, Getty Images
Cope authored 1,400 scientific papers—some of them perhaps seen here in his office—throughout his illustrious career. However, his rivalry with Othniel Marsh would lead in part to his downfall: After years of sabotage and public accusations, Cope eventually had to sell his fossil collection at a loss.
Photograph by Alpha Historica, Alamy
Cope pointed out that he had spent upwards of $80,000 of his own money to finance the expeditions. He also protested what he believed was a conspiracy against him. Noble’s name may have been on the letter, but Cope believed it had another author: Marsh.
If Marsh was going to sabotage him, Cope was going to take his rival down with him. He had a secret weapon: a cache of notes and papers that recounted Marsh’s many faults over the years.
Cope shared the archive with journalist William H. Ballou, alleging that Marsh regularly plagiarized from colleagues and assistants and also conspired to funnel federal funds to himself. On January 12, 1890, The New York Herald ran the story.
Marsh responded in a series of articles, defending himself and issuing barbs of his own against Cope. They had turned a major newspaper into their personal boxing ring.
The duel in the Herald was the climax of a decades-long scientific war. Marsh and Cope, two brilliant minds who worked so hard to shape our understanding of the world, worked equally hard to sabotage one another. This feud fueled their work. Cope authored 1,400 scientific papers, and his and Marsh’s combined efforts defined more than 130 extinct species.
It came at great cost. In 1892, Marsh’s superior at the U.S. Geological Survey asked him to resign. Cope eventually had to sell his fossil collection at a loss a few years before his death in 1897. The Bone Wars, and its final battle, ruined both men.
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