WEBVTT - Selects: What Were the BONE WARS? 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:04.800 Hello, Happy Saturday, everybody. What were the Bone Wars? Why 0:00:04.840 --> 0:00:07.120 am I asking you? Because I'm the one who knows. 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:11.560 This episode was from August of twenty nineteen, and it 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:13.800 was all about the Bone Wars, something I knew nothing 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.840 about until we did this episode. One of the top 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.480 three reasons why I love this job. I get just 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:21.400 a little bit smarter every week, and I hope you 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:21.760 do too. 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:24.640 Please enjoy. 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:35.600 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.080 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.000 there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:50.879 and ra That was a limp limp. Laugh, Chuck, I've 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:52.360 gotten way better laughs out of either. 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.600 Are you a dinosaur A little bit? 0:00:57.720 --> 0:00:59.680 I got a little dinosaur, Me got a little in 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:04.280 the end, tall in me earned from twenty three in me. Yeah, 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:08.640 But despite my dinosaur heritage, I was never a big 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:10.759 time into dinosaurs as a kid. Were you? 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:10.959 No? 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:12.080 Not? 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:17.399 Like It's astounding, Chuck, how similar we were as children. 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.640 I know the only princes I didn't smoke. When I 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:21.560 was seven years. 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:25.320 Old fourteen, I was the ripe old Asian four again. 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:29.479 I started smoking so It wasn't like I don't know 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:30.959 if it was the same with you. It's not like 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:35.360 I had anything against dinosaurs or kids who liked dinosaurs. 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:37.440 I thought they were kind of cool. And I had 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.880 some like like figurines here or there, But it wasn't 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:43.160 anything like I was nerdy about in any way, shape 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:43.600 or form. 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:46.679 Yeah, And I mean I think there was there's a 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:51.280 certain movie that really really got kids into dinosaurs, The 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:57.240 Lost World No Ferrispeeler's Day Off right, and that movie 0:01:57.240 --> 0:01:58.680 came out, you know when I was older. 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:00.360 Yeah, same here I was. 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:02.360 I even remember what year that was. I feel like 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:03.520 I was in college, though. 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:07.000 I want to say it was like ninety two to 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:09.520 ninety four, one of those years. That's what I would guess. 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.040 But kids these days are and it's not just my kid, 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:16.800 but I see lots of kids in her age group 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:19.280 that are obsessed with dinosaurs. 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:21.360 Yeah, and I think that's cool, Like, what a cool 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:23.360 thing to be obsessed with it? Kid teaches you so 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:26.840 much stuff you know about the deep past, about evolution, 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:32.679 about you know, walking lizard bird creatures. You know, there's 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.080 a lot, there's a lot to learn from, like being 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:38.280 interested in dinosaurs, that's a very cool thing to be interested. 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:39.680 In about death and extinction. 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.000 Sure, rotting, fossilization. 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:44.360 Yeah, all the good stuff, right. 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.880 But the whole interest, including the interest that was around 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:51.799 when we were kids, that just kind of passed us by. 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:55.399 But definitely, you know, the interest in dinosaurs that gave 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:59.160 rise to the idea of Michael Crichton even writing Jurassic 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.040 Park and then Steve Spielberg even making it into a movie. 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.760 That interest in dinosaurs in America you can actually trace 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:11.520 back to almost a specific winter in a specific place 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:15.040 in the nineteenth century, and the winter of eighteen seventy 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:19.280 seven in particular, and it was the result of a vicious, 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:27.320 mean spirited, petty rivalry between two paleontologists that really kind 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.440 of sparked America's interest in dinosaurs. 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:35.840 Yeah, I mean it feels very Tesla. Who's the other guy? 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:40.600 Oh, what was his name? Marconi maybe? Or Ferris Bueller. 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:44.160 Yeah, that's it really reminded me of the Tesla Ferris 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:46.440 Bueller rivalry. 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.280 Ferris won that one square and the. 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:50.440 Current Wars, which, by the way, that movie's coming out. 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:52.280 Have you seen the trailer about. 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:53.760 The no who plays who? 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:54.920 You know? 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:56.600 I can't remember now, but I saw it the other 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:58.200 day and it looks it looks pretty good. 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:01.400 Nicholas Cage plays both roles. O, God, how great. 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:01.640 Would that be? 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.720 It would be pretty great ac DC right. 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.240 Just like that's two hours right there, right. 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.040 There's actually going to be a movie, or there was 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:13.680 going to be a movie about what we're about to 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:15.440 talk about today. Did you know that now? 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:16.480 I kind of wondered though. 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:20.680 Yeah, it was scheduled for production. Steve Carell was going 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:25.720 to play Cope. Oh and James Gandolfini was going to 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:30.279 play Marsh and James Gandalfini died unexpectedly and the production 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:31.440 just got kiboshed. 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:33.880 And they also found out that the title The Bone 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:39.239 Wars had already been taken by a adult pornography. Yep, 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:41.520 we're so on the same page. 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:43.680 We totally saw children. 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:48.120 No interest in Jurassic Park or any dinosaurs, but we 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.760 think the names of porno films is hilarious. That's our 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:52.479 big interest. 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:54.679 So I thought it was funny. 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:58.000 You know, we commissioned this piece for the Grabster and 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.280 he's a big dinosaur guy, and he was somewhat shamed. 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:03.440 He was like, I just and he said it two 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:05.000 or three times, like, I can't believe I didn't know 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:05.719 about these guys. 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:08.240 Yeah, we're like, it's okay, Greb, sir, it's all right. 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:08.560 Yeah. 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:10.320 But so I feel like he learned something along the 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:13.320 way and he starts out, and I think it's a 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:15.160 good thing for us to talk a little bit about 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:21.520 just before these dudes, how paleontology came about and that 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:25.000 had you know, I think since people just started stumbling 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:29.240 upon bones, even by accident, before it was even a discipline, 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:32.320 people were like, oh man, look at that thing. 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:33.800 I'm going to pick that up and take it. 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:35.160 With me, right. 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.120 I think they used to get classified also as mythological 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:42.360 creatures or dead gods or something like that. But the 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:49.280 first documented paleontological expedition in North America was carried out 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:52.120 by none other than Lewis and Clark. Yeah, did you 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:53.960 know that before? Did we mention that in the episode? 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:54.360 Do you think? 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:57.359 I don't know, but I did know at some point 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:01.119 from somewhere. Maybe it was the the ken Burns piece, 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:03.560 but that, you know, one of the things they did. 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:07.800 I mean, they were logging everything, including bone deposits. 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:11.960 But they spent like a week around Salt Lick flats 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:17.440 or salt lick gully or salt lick something where there 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:19.760 was a big old salt like that used to attract 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:27.000 dinosaurs and plesisteine mammals from two different periods. Everybody putre 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:30.800 emails away and the bones that would collect there were 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.520 really significant, so they spent a week like excavating there. 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:35.360 But that was the first one. But that was even 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:38.560 before the world the word paleontology was coined. 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:42.040 Yeah, that was in eighteen twenty two in the French 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:46.919 journal de Physique. And there were a couple of people 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:51.520 that preceded, and in fact, one of whom went on 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.920 to be a sort of a mentor to Cope. But 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:57.800 a goy named Edward Hitchcock and another guy named Joseph 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.120 is it Lighty or Leady? 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:03.640 I think Lighty is what I've seen the most. 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.400 Yeah, laid Y, and he's the one that went on 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:09.159 to work with Cope later on. But just put a 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:11.760 pin in this. But in eighteen fifty eight a pretty 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:16.440 important find, basically the only big dinosaur find on the 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.800 East Coast, where the fossil ee bones of a herbivore 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:25.480 name Hadrosaurus Folky in New Jersey, and it was a 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.040 big deal because it was on the East Coast and 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:29.680 this is where this stuff was going on at time, 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:31.760 and you get a lot of footprints on the East Coast, 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:32.960 but not a lot of finds like this. 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:37.360 Yeah, it was an enormous find and Lighty was called 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.520 in to help excavate it and put it together because 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:45.840 he was America's first vertebrate paleontologist. He was the first 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:48.960 guy and was really prolific and really good at what 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:52.320 he did, and like you said, would eventually become a 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.520 mentor to one of the guys we should probably introduce now, 0:07:56.240 --> 0:08:00.960 because Lighty was working in I think first real burst 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:04.160 of energy came in the eighteen fifties, the early eighteen fifties, 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:10.160 and within about fifteen maybe twenty years, there were a 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.080 pair of guys who would come along and just completely 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.920 change the field of paleontology. It started out very normally, 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.760 just another scientific field, very exciting, lots of discoveries to 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:23.080 be made. I mean that's the point of all this, right, 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.720 is that, like if you have a brand new scientific field, 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.440 everything you come across is worth writing about describing. You 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.439 get to name everything. So it was a really exciting, 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:38.199 like dynamic time for the field of paleontology. But a 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:42.600 field of science is the character of it is based 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:47.160 on its earliest practitioners. And Lighty was a very steady, 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:51.439 normal scientist who was very reliable. So he kind of 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:54.120 set paleontology up like that. But then along came a 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:56.480 couple of guys who would form this rivalry and they 0:08:56.520 --> 0:09:00.200 would change all of that. I don't think necessarily to 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:02.960 this day, but there was a lot of sniping that 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:05.880 used to go on in the field of paleontology. That 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.440 was because of the tone that these guys set. 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.920 Yeah, and both of them would end up basically bankrupt 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:16.559 at the end of each of their lives because of 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:20.480 all their efforts to outdo and undermine one another's work. 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:26.480 So we're talking about two dudes. One is Marsh and 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:27.760 one is Cope. 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:32.600 Oth Neil. I've never heard that name before. 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:34.839 I think his parents made it. 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:37.680 Up, maybe O t h n I e Othniel. Charles 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:41.199 Marsh born in October eighteen thirty one in New York 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:45.120 and he was They didn't have a lot of money 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:48.440 in his family. They were farmers. He would have been 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:51.320 a farmer, but he had and this kind of really 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:53.880 changed his life. He had a very rich uncle named 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:57.400 George Peabody, who would go on to really kind of 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:01.160 fund his education in early part of his career later on. 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:03.840 Yeah, he just plucked him out of the farm field 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:06.480 basically and said, and I have no idea why he 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:08.640 did this, but he said, you, I like the look 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:11.199 of you and your brain, nephew, and you're going. 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:13.600 To go for smart would be My guess was that it? 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:15.800 Okay, Well, I don't know how he demonstrated it, I 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:17.560 guess is what I'm trying to say, Like, how did 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:19.360 his uncle say, yes, you're the one. 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:21.680 Oh, you know, smarts are always evident. 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:24.439 Okay, Well, he plucked him out, sent him to boring school, 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:26.640 then sent him to Yale, and eventually sent him off 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:31.560 to grad school in Germany. So, Marsh, we're just going 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:33.199 to call him Marsh because his name is just too 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:37.720 ugly and horrible to say out loud. Yeah, he was 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:40.720 basically set. He was fine. He had a benefactor in 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.720 his extraordinarily wealthy philanthropist uncle. 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:45.679 Yeah. 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:50.360 So Cope, on the other hand, similarly had money, but 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:52.880 his was like in his family, he wasn't like poor 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:55.240 with a rich uncle. He had a wealthy family, very 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:58.960 prominent family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was born in July 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:02.520 eighteen forty, and he went to you know, all the 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:05.160 I was gonna say trappings, but I guess all the 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:09.079 benefits of being born into money. He went to very nice, 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:14.280 expensive boarding school, and that wasn't so much up his alley. 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:18.600 So he dropped out when he was sixteen. And because 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:22.560 he had a rich, rich dad, it allowed him a 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:26.959 lot of opportunities that other people wouldn't have, including, you know, 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:29.520 going to college later on, even though he never graduated 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:30.040 high school. 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:34.280 Yeah, well there, so it was definitely in part because 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:36.320 of his dad. But also this was a time in 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:40.800 like say the eighteen fifties lax. It was lax, but 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:43.000 also like even if you wanted to go on and 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:48.560 become like a get a PhD, American universities weren't you know, 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:53.440 they didn't offer many PhD programs in sciences, right, So 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:58.040 there was a there was a whole something called gentleman 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:04.400 naturalists who were amateur, self taught scientists who just just 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:06.640 did the work. They knew what they were doing, they 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:08.600 figured it out as they went along, and they actually 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.600 developed some of these fields. And so he kind of 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:15.640 subscribed to that school where that old school of gentlemen 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.400 naturalists where there was you could you could go figure 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.120 it out yourself without needing to go through the university. 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:25.160 But he did that just on the cusp like our parents' 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:29.120 generation was just on the cusp of the last group 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:31.520 who could get away without knowing how to use email. 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:35.600 He was like part of that last generation that could 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:38.680 become a scientist without having to go through formal training 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:39.640 at a university. 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.000 Right, Like if you have a tweet suit with a 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:45.480 stiff color and a pencil and a pad, you can 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:47.080 end lots of time on your hands. 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:51.000 Yeah, and that's that's I mean, to Cope's credit, I 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:53.319 think that that really kind of demonstrates like he's like, no, 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:57.079 I'm going to go learn from experience. He did knocking it, 0:12:57.240 --> 0:12:59.840 but he did get entree into places like the University 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:03.880 of Pennsylvania or the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:06.360 because of his family's context. But I get the impression 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.360 that he worked his way into those places. Once he 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.600 got in, he he didn't just loaf. He learned what 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:13.520 he needed to learn. 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:15.320 Yeah, I mean, because if there's one thing we're going 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:17.880 to learn about Cope here over the next thirty minutes 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:18.120 or so. 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:19.800 Is he worked hard? 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:24.240 Yes, he's my pick of the bone wars. He's who 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:25.360 I put my money behind. 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:26.080 Is he your guy? 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:26.839 Yep? 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:27.679 Interesting? 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:32.439 Did we ever say his name Edward Drinker Cope, Yeah, 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:33.640 that's a weird middle name. 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:34.280 It is. 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:38.280 He was a drinker, literally, he really was. 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:38.240 He was. 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.520 Also he was also a Quaker and a pacifist too. 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:42.560 That's right. 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:46.080 So at college at University of Pennsylvania, that's where he 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:48.400 met Joseph Leidy. He was one of his professors, so 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:53.400 that just, you know, kind of kickstarted their relationship. During 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:57.120 the Civil War, he went to Europe the American Civil 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:00.160 War because he didn't want to be you know, want 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:00.520 to go to war. 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:01.800 He didn't want to go fight. He wanted to go 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:02.600 dig up bones. 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:05.240 Yeah, and he was a Quaker pacifist too. 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:05.960 That's right. 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:08.680 So he went to Germany and in eighteen sixty three 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:12.600 he met marsh and they really liked each other at first. 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:15.520 They had a lot in common, obviously, And I get 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:19.240 the feeling that in Germany in eighteen sixty three there 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:21.440 were probably not a ton of Americans who were super 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:26.400 interested in dinosaur hunting. And so they locked up became 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.800 really good pals. They came back to the US after 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:34.080 the Civil War and friends, and we're both like, all right, 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.440 we're going to go do our thing independently, but we're 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:38.600 going to keep in touch. We're going to swap info 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.840 early on here. And it was all very friendly at first. 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:43.720 Right, And I think you can make a pretty good 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.760 case that they probably cut their own palms and clasped 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:51.080 hands and became blood brother brothers during the German meeting. Okay, probably, 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:53.280 So that's what we're going with, because they really did 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:56.760 like each other and things were going along just fine. 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:03.240 Two kindred spirits with a common intro paleontology, and they 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:06.320 may have continued on that way, although I sincerely doubt 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:09.520 that that's the case, which means I just undermined my 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:14.280 own statement. But after the Civil War they both went 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:17.880 back to the United States to start careers, their own careers, 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:22.320 and marsh or Cope, I'm sorry. He had connected with 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:26.240 Joseph Lighty, who he had met through the University of 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.280 Pennsylvania and the Academy of Natural Sciences. They worked together there, 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:33.600 and so he went off with Lighty to study bones 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:36.520 that were found at hadden Field in New Jersey, where 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:40.160 Lighty found that first skeleton, right, and so being friends 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:43.360 with Marsh, he naturally, Cope naturally extended an invitation, Hey, 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:44.840 come visit me in the field. You got to see 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:47.920 this place. It's amazing. There's fossils everywhere. You're gonna love it. 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:50.240 And so Marsh came out for a visit. And this 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:55.200 was mark one in the turning point of their relationship. 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:59.000 There were two distinct marks, each of them point to 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:01.920 one is the end of their friendship. This was the 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:05.400 end of their friendship starting with Cope. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:09.880 That's right. So both of these guys had privilege, like 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:13.760 we've been talking about. For Marsh's part, his uncle, his 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:17.160 rich uncle, donated one hundred and fifty grand to Yale 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:21.760 basically to sort of get March a job. They created 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:25.760 the Peabody Museum of Natural History, and then they were like, well, hey, 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:30.520 we need a professor to chair this new department, and 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:34.400 so why not your nephew, And they said, Bully, that's 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:37.640 a great idea. So it basically costs one hundred and 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.000 fifty grand to get Marsh this job is the chair 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:45.120 of Department of Paleontology at this new Peabody Museum at 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:46.680 Yale University. 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:49.560 Right, And so they said, yes, we want to make 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:54.560 you the first professor of paleontology in America. And Marsh said, yes, 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:57.280 that's a great idea. I like where you're going Yale. 0:16:57.320 --> 0:16:59.040 I'm going to spend a lot of time here, I 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:02.440 can tell. So that's that's Marsh setting off on his 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.800 little trajectory, basically ensconcing himself in Yale. 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:06.120 Right. 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:11.960 Cope, remember he was basically a high school dropout and 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:15.160 he had to kind of make his own way. He 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:19.520 had trouble at first finding a position until he struck 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.520 upon a place called Haverford College and he got a 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:27.200 position as a professor of zoology there, and they said, well, 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:29.280 you're a high school dropout, so we'll just give you 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:33.560 an honorary Masters of Arts degree, being now you're a professor. 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:36.960 Was working out for both of these guys. 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:39.480 Yeah, although Cope didn't really like have her for that much. 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:45.800 He ends up quitting and it actually kind of it 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.640 kind of describes his personality a little bit, that that 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:54.360 incident that he would get a good job having kind 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:59.080 of been carried into that position, and then says, this 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:02.760 job is bs some quitting that he was apparently prone 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:05.359 to kind of a quick temper here or there. 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:07.720 Yeah, I mean it's ed does make the point. 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:10.080 It's kind of hard to piece together a personality from 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.200 someone way back then. But by most accounts, Cope was 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:18.119 a bit mercurial, a little more outgoing. Marsh was a 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:20.840 little quieter and kind of known as a bit of 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:26.640 a flake, you know. But considering their backgrounds, it sort 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:29.359 of makes sense where they ended up. Marsh, you know, 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.080 they went about their work in very different ways. Marsh 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.320 didn't publish his first paper until he was thirty years old. 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:39.800 He was a lifelong bachelor. Cope married when he was 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.919 twenty five. And Cope, you know, even the way they 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:47.680 wrote co wrote these very sort of flowery descriptions of things. Well, 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:50.679 Marsh was much more sort of rigid and sort of 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:51.760 dry and scientific. 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.159 Yeah, Like if you read Cope stuff, he's trying to 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.400 like set the scene for you. You know, there's one 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:01.320 paper where he was describing terror acts, and like it's 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:03.159 a scientific paper, so all you have to do is 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:06.800 describe the bones and the measurements and extrapolate and that 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:09.280 kind of stuff. But he's like painting the picture of 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:11.840 what it must have been like on a cliff side 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:13.880 by the ocean as a troop of these things were 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:17.680 dangling by their claws. You know. Yeah, it's super cool. 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:20.119 It would definitely transport the reader there, and it was 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:23.879 a little extra dollop of something that you didn't have 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.600 to put on. But Cope definitely did put on, which 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:30.160 is surprising that he put anything extra into his work 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:34.720 because he published at an extraordinary pace, so much so 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:38.480 that Marsh in particular was like, this man is obviously fraudulent. 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:40.399 Nobody can publish this much. 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:43.520 Yeah, for sure. And we'll touch on that a bit later. 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:47.520 The big difference in their earlier careers was when it 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:50.520 came to religion. Like you said earlier, Cope was a 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:52.720 Quaker and was a religious man. 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:53.760 Marsh was not. 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:57.080 He was not very into religion, and he was fully 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:01.600 down with evolution and natural selection and Darwin, whereas Cope 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:05.239 kind of had to make it all fit within his 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:10.120 religious beliefs. So it's not like he outright like called 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:13.080 Darwin a fraud or anything like that, but he worked 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:17.000 in like the actions of God into his theories and 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.719 sort of made it all work according to his you know, 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:21.679 religious beliefs. 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:23.440 Which is I mean. 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:26.880 Back then a little a little bit different, but even 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:30.520 back then for a scientist, sort of an odd thing. 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:35.080 Yeah, for sure. But he tried to rectify science and 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:37.560 his religious belief and the way that a lot of 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:40.440 people did that back then was to subscribe to neo Lamarckism, 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:45.400 which is this idea that changes in a population take 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.000 place on the individual level. Like an example I saw 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:52.200 was if you're a blacksmith and you use your arm 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:54.200 a bunch to hammer, you're going to get a big 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:55.080 old bulky arm. 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:55.360 Right. 0:20:55.760 --> 0:20:57.919 Well, when you have kids, you're going to pass that 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:00.720 bulky arm that you developed in your lifetime off to them. 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:03.920