A Voice from the Cambrian

Dinosaur Wars

The two protagonists-paleontologists Edward D. Cope and Othneil C. Marsh-started out as friends. Cope once took Marsh on a tour of his favorite collecting sites in New Jersey. When Cope returned the next summer, he discovered that Marsh had secretly bought the mineral rights to these areas, and that he could no longer collect there. Their friendship declined abruptly. Cope then concentrated on the fossils collected during the Ferdinand Hayden surveys in what is now Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas, surveys that produced better material than Marsh was obtaining on the East Coast.

Marsh quickly expanded his operations out West, and their territorial squabbles escalated. In 1872, Joseph Leidy, the father of American vertebrate paleontology, took both men on a joint expedition to Wyoming in an attempt to resolve their differences. It was to no avail, however; by the end of the summer, an all-out war between the two had begun. Both Cope and Marsh were more than a little egotistical: Each was determined to be the first to scientifically name and describe new fossil species, including dinosaurs, and each considered his own worth superior to anyone else's.

Most of their competition centered on the rocks of the Morrison Formation. This original "Jurassic Park" produced some of the most spectacular dinosaur fossils ever discovered, which, unlike the partial remains found in the East, included complete skulls and skeletons.

By 1891, the arguments boiled over into the national press. Cope accused Marsh, who was the official vertebrate paleontologist for the U.S. government, of misusing government money. He argued that Marsh took advantage of both his position and federal tax dollars to enhance his own fossil collection. In fact, Marsh also used his own money for collecting, but, because of Cope's claim, he was ordered to turn over all material that had been collected with government funds to the Smithsonian.

The Marsh collection became the foundation of the National Museum of Natural History's dinosaur collections. Many specimens found by Marsh's field crews from the 1870s through the late 1890s are here: The predatory Allosaurus is one of the most complete skeletons ever mounted. in a museum; Ceratosaurus, another meat-eater, is known for its complete skull, unique in the world. Our knowledge of this animal is based on the Smithsonian fossil. The museum's Stegosaurus is displayed as it was found, in its flattened death position. For more than 100 years, this remained the most complete known specimen of this creature. Other Marsh specimens in the paleobiology collection include Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, favorite dinners of Tyrannosaurus Rex

The public's fascination with dinosaurs has continued long after Cope's death in 1897 and Marsh's in 1899. From 1903 until 1940, Charles W. Gilmore upheld their legacy. He discovered the first large accumulations of baby dinosaurs in North America, and the massive Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, and Brachyceratops in the Dinosaur Hall were collected by Gilmore's crews. The Dinosaur Hall exemplifies the Smithsonian's percentage of type specimens on display, a percentage that is unrivaled in the museum world. (A type specimen is the original one used to name a new species.)

Even today the public can see many of the fossils Marsh described during his race for fame with Cope in naming new dinosaurs. Ceratosaurus nasicornis, Edmontosaurus annectens, Stegosaurus stenops, and Camp- tosaurus nanus are among them. Other type specimens on exhibit include Gilmore's Brachyceratops montanensis, Thescelosaurus neglectus, and Camptosaurus brown). From 1959 until his retirement in 1993, Nicholas Hotton III served as the Smithsonian's "dinosaur curator." In 1979,1 joined him in the Department of Paleebiology as a museum specialist, and together we have led expeditions to Big Horn County, Wyoming. To this day, dinosaur fossils outnumber that region's human inhabitants.

Return to A Voice from the Cambrian

		Contacts | FAQ | Press Room | Privacy | Copyright	Top