Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: to bling a truck reporting and I and we're continuing
Speaker 1: on here with our discussion of the Bone Wars, which
Speaker 1: are also sometimes known as the Dinosaur Wars or the
Speaker 1: Great Dinosaur Feud. And it's the story of an intense
Speaker 1: scientific rivalry between two really talented nineteenth century paleontologists, Edward
Speaker 1: Drinker Cope and off Neil Charles Marsh. And they entered
Speaker 1: the field at a time when very few dinosaur species
Speaker 1: were known and competed defined fossils, name the species that
Speaker 1: those fossils belonged to, and to be the first to
Speaker 1: publish their findings. And in part one of this episode,
Speaker 1: we learned a little bit about Cope and Marsh's backgrounds
Speaker 1: and how they got to be paleontologists because they took
Speaker 1: very different paths, as we'll get into a little bit
Speaker 1: more later. And we also talked about how they started
Speaker 1: out as friends, or at least as friendly colleagues or acquaintances.
Speaker 1: I don't know if even their early friendships wud Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't categorize that as a friendship. People do friendly. Yes,
Speaker 1: they were friendly, and uh, we also talked about what
Speaker 1: exactly it was that caused this enormous riff to form
Speaker 1: between them. Yeah, and when we left them off, Cope
Speaker 1: and Marsh had just started to look west in search
Speaker 1: of fossils. In this episode, though, we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking a bit about what they found out west and
Speaker 1: these sometimes shady tactics that they employed to be the
Speaker 1: first to get credit for their discoveries. We're also going
Speaker 1: to take a look at the more official stage on
Speaker 1: which their battle played out and where it got truly
Speaker 1: truly nasty. But first we want to take a closer
Speaker 1: look at who these guys were, because it might help
Speaker 1: provide at least a little more insight as to why
Speaker 1: they were destined to clash in the first place, the
Speaker 1: clash of the dinosaur hunters. Okay, so we've already talked
Speaker 1: about the differences between Cope and Marsha's socio economic backgrounds
Speaker 1: and their educational training, which is kind of where it
Speaker 1: all started. And if you'll recall, Marsh was poor raised
Speaker 1: on a farm until his uncle, George Peabody stepped in
Speaker 1: with the financial support that Marsh needed to go to
Speaker 1: prep school. And then onto Yale. And it's Peabody's generous
Speaker 1: donation at Marsha's request that also led to the creation
Speaker 1: of a Museum of Natural Sciences at Yale, which was
Speaker 1: a move that then helped secure Marsha professorship there and
Speaker 1: it created a great resource for him while he was
Speaker 1: hunting for fossils. Yeah, he had the Yale in its corner.
Speaker 1: But all of Peabody's support did unfortunately come with a catch.
Speaker 1: According to an article by James Pannic an American Heritage,
Speaker 1: it turned out that Uncle George had a certain stipulation
Speaker 1: for anyone named in his will, and that stipulation involved marriage.
Speaker 1: When he was twenty five and a freshman at Yale,
Speaker 1: marsh received eaved a letter from his aunt indicating this stipulation,
Speaker 1: and it read quote, if any of his nephews should
Speaker 1: in any way conduct himself as to disgrace themselves and
Speaker 1: him or now mine this, should any of them form
Speaker 1: a marriage connection or even get engaged before they had
Speaker 1: the means of supporting a family, they should never have
Speaker 1: a cent of his money. He desired me to communicate
Speaker 1: this to all his nephews. Yeah, and apparently there was
Speaker 1: one other nephew who had gotten cut out of the
Speaker 1: will for marrying too soon, so Peabody was serious about
Speaker 1: put to the test. By the time March was financially independent,
Speaker 1: he was well into his thirties, so Pennett kind of
Speaker 1: suggests maybe he was too set in his ways to
Speaker 1: marry at that point, or you know, just wasn't inclined
Speaker 1: to do so, or just that he had this strange
Speaker 1: break on his life until he could be financially independent.
Speaker 1: He had some other friendly sort of issues though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just basically the issue was he didn't have many friends.
Speaker 1: According to an article by Tom Huntington in American History,
Speaker 1: people found Marsh to be quote autocratic and petty and
Speaker 1: accused him of taking credit for the work of his
Speaker 1: assistance and for falling behind on paying his employees, never
Speaker 1: a good move. At one of his clubs, they apparently
Speaker 1: nicknamed him quote the Great dismal Swamp. That's a bad sign.
Speaker 1: He doesn't do well with the nicknames. No, she really doesn't,
Speaker 1: except for the bone wars that one is. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty great nickname for his rivalry. Cope, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: came from a very different kind of background, which we
Speaker 1: discussed on the on the last podcast. It was a
Speaker 1: more privileged beginning, if you remember in the last episode.
Speaker 1: Though he didn't have a lot of formal education. He
Speaker 1: was self taught and he was a part of this
Speaker 1: whole gentleman's world of natural science that existed in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Deblina and I were talking about it earlier,
Speaker 1: how it just fascinates us that gentleman would choose to
Speaker 1: to science in some form, and there's something very romantic
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, we both talked about how it's
Speaker 1: just there's something very ideal. A little troubling too, because
Speaker 1: it ends up with you end up with personal disputes
Speaker 1: like this. But um Cope was considered to be very brilliant,
Speaker 1: considered to be a prodigy, and his life was also
Speaker 1: very different from marsh Is on a personal level too.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that he was married, he had a wife,
Speaker 1: he had a daughter named Julia. Unlike marsh to Cope
Speaker 1: was pretty charming. The friends he had seemed to really
Speaker 1: like him, really care for him, although they would agree
Speaker 1: that he could kind of be arrogant sometimes he could
Speaker 1: be quick tempered. According to Huntington's article, paleontologist William Berryman Scott,
Speaker 1: who took Cope side in the war with Marsh instead
Speaker 1: of Cope Quote, despite his greatness in some measure, indeed
Speaker 1: because of it, he had some unfortunate personal peculiarities. Was
Speaker 1: pugnacious and quarrelsome and made many enemies, so many enemies,
Speaker 1: many friends, no friends on the other side, kind of
Speaker 1: unusual guys. So when we last left off of our story,
Speaker 1: Cope had kind of broken the mold of those gentlemen
Speaker 1: naturalists that we were describing. They usually waited for things
Speaker 1: to be sent to them to study. They didn't actually
Speaker 1: go out on these great expeditions. They limit their study
Speaker 1: to the comfort of their own home exactly. And Cope,
Speaker 1: like Marsh, went out to hunt fossils, but he had
Speaker 1: a different way of traveling from Marsh. We mentioned how
Speaker 1: Marsh went out with this entourage and had guides in
Speaker 1: a military escort. Cope did not have a resource like
Speaker 1: Yale behind him, so he didn't have all these graduate
Speaker 1: assistants to come with him, so he often put together
Speaker 1: teams for his expeditions when he got wherever he was going. Also,
Speaker 1: since Cope was a Quaker, he really used a military
Speaker 1: escort because he was a pacifist, and he pretty much
Speaker 1: refused to carry a revolver, which a lot of people
Speaker 1: thought was crazy because of the threat of hostile Native
Speaker 1: American tribes out west, among other things. Yeah, Bandit Taiwan,
Speaker 1: then all sorts of of risks he might come across,
Speaker 1: not to mention just the wildlife Pentually, um Cope did
Speaker 1: things his way, though, and he was very tough about it.
Speaker 1: Panic relates how Cope would read the Bible every night,
Speaker 1: even when he was out in the field, and if
Speaker 1: others in his camp would would laugh at him, he'd
Speaker 1: sort of stare them down until they would just uh
Speaker 1: straightened up, you know, stop laughing, stop making fun of him.
Speaker 1: Cope and Marsh did both have successes in the field
Speaker 1: that we've kind of described the way they carried about
Speaker 1: their expeditions, but they did both have successes though Marsh,
Speaker 1: of course, with his official Yale connection and his Peabody
Speaker 1: inheritance at his disposal, did have more resources to throw
Speaker 1: at the situation. However, both to some extent, Cope especially
Speaker 1: or reliant on being associated with one of several geological
Speaker 1: surveys of the West that were going on at the time.
Speaker 1: It was kind of an official backing almost Yeah. Being
Speaker 1: involved with these surveys provided economic support for their work
Speaker 1: and a vehicle for publishing their findings, and this becomes
Speaker 1: important later in our story as well. So just kind
Speaker 1: of remember that. We talked a little in the last
Speaker 1: podcast also about how Marsh and Cope started going at
Speaker 1: each other mostly by way of letters after their initial
Speaker 1: expeditions out west, when they started really competing in a
Speaker 1: sense for fossil finds out there. But they really launched
Speaker 1: into full scale warfare in eighteen seventy seven when Arthur Lakes,
Speaker 1: who was a mining teacher, wrote to Marsh saying that
Speaker 1: he discovered some fossils near Morris in Colorado. Now Marsh
Speaker 1: didn't reply, so Lakes said, well, okay, I want to
Speaker 1: do something with these, so he sent some samples to Cope.
Speaker 1: When Marsh heard that, though he sent Lakes some cash
Speaker 1: to win him over, he was like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: want Cope to get these. After that, after getting that cash,
Speaker 1: Lakes asked Cope to please send back his samples so
Speaker 1: that he could work with the Marsh And according to
Speaker 1: Huntington's part of what Marsh found among Lake's initial find
Speaker 1: were the remains the first remains of the Stegosaurus around
Speaker 1: the time. The same time, too, another teacher named O. W.
Speaker 1: Lucas also found some fossils in Colorado. He contacted Cope
Speaker 1: first about it, and Cope jumped at the chance to
Speaker 1: to check out the fossils. Overall, according to Huntington's, Cope's
Speaker 1: Colorado finds actually turned out to be better than marshes
Speaker 1: because they were bigger and they could be taken out
Speaker 1: of the surrounding rock without breaking them. Marsh, of course,
Speaker 1: so did come out on top in other situations. In
Speaker 1: the summer of eighteen seventy seven, for example, two railway
Speaker 1: workers in Como, Wyoming named William Reid and W. E.
Speaker 1: Carlin contacted Marsh about some fossils that they had discovered
Speaker 1: as a site known as Como Bluff, and marshal course
Speaker 1: and his bone collectors out there. They ended up gathering
Speaker 1: thirty tons of fossils from the Jurassic Age and shipped
Speaker 1: all the stuff back to Marsh at Yale. And it
Speaker 1: was very high quality, you know, large bones. It was
Speaker 1: well preserved. The result of of Marcia's investigation of this
Speaker 1: fine too, really speaks to how high quality it was.
Speaker 1: He discovered several new species and named um the Allosaurus,
Speaker 1: the Diplodocus, the Camptosaurus, all from those Como bluff fine
Speaker 1: and also notably he named the Brontosaurus out of those fines,
Speaker 1: one of the world's best known dinosaurs, and Sara doutis
Speaker 1: favorite dinosaur. I should mention interesting, though, that the naming
Speaker 1: of Brontosaurus is actually considered one of Marcia's biggest mistakes.
Speaker 1: After he died, scientists realized that the creature Marcia named
Speaker 1: Brontosaurus was just another example of a dinosaur Marsh had
Speaker 1: already named the Patosaurus, so the designation Brontosaurus was taken
Speaker 1: away obviously, though that's kind of an enduring yes. So
Speaker 1: it's probably clear by now that Cope and Marsh often
Speaker 1: weren't the ones actually digging in the ground, collecting fossils,
Speaker 1: or even supervising digs themselves, Hence all the talk of
Speaker 1: sending bones back east to them. They accomplished a lot
Speaker 1: of what they did through the help of bone collectors.
Speaker 1: Cope and Marsh would occasionally visit the dig sites, but
Speaker 1: the fossil collectors were sort of the foot soldiers in
Speaker 1: this battle that they were waging against each other. Too.
Speaker 1: There really was a lot of taking sides. Reid took
Speaker 1: Marsh's side and became a major collector for him. Well,
Speaker 1: Carlin switched over to Cope side, Lucas remained on Cope side,
Speaker 1: while Lakes stuck with Marsh. I was surprised by Lucas,
Speaker 1: I think, since he sort of got slighted at the
Speaker 1: beginning by Marsh. But I guess I was okay, might
Speaker 1: have been better. Yeah, I mean that means a lot.
Speaker 1: It does. Occasionally though, according to Huntington, again, the two
Speaker 1: peontologists would try to woo each other's collectors away from
Speaker 1: the other. Um. I don't know if they were attempting
Speaker 1: them with better publication of the works or money all
Speaker 1: the time. But that wasn't the most extreme of the
Speaker 1: tactics used in this war. I mean that already sounds
Speaker 1: a little bit dicey. But they also spied on each other.
Speaker 1: Marsh at least would even communicate in code with his
Speaker 1: collectors to try to keep Cope from figuring out what
Speaker 1: he was up to, what his bone collectors were up to.
Speaker 1: They referred to Cope as Jones in this Sneaky correspondence,
Speaker 1: and one of Marsha's guys was so paranoid about Cope
Speaker 1: spying on him that when a man showed up at
Speaker 1: their camp one day in eighteen seventy eight, he asked
Speaker 1: for a handwriting sample in case it was Cope in disguise.
Speaker 1: He was so suspicious. So I guess they were right
Speaker 1: to worry, though, because Cope really did charm his way
Speaker 1: into one of Marsha's camps in eighteen seventy nine, probably
Speaker 1: to woo some team members over to his side, or
Speaker 1: just to steal information outright. But the funny thing was
Speaker 1: Marsha's men really liked Cope. According to Huntington's article, Lakes
Speaker 1: later wrote of the incident that Cope quote entertained his
Speaker 1: party by singing comic songs with a refrain at the
Speaker 1: end like the howl of coyote, and Lakes went on
Speaker 1: to observe quote. I must say that when I saw
Speaker 1: of him, I liked very much. His manner is so
Speaker 1: affable in his conversation, very agreeable. I only wish I
Speaker 1: could feel sure he had a sound reputation for honesty.
Speaker 1: Maybe not. According to an article by Renee Clary, James Wandersie,
Speaker 1: and Amy Capernelli in Science Scope, March was said to
Speaker 1: have planted unrelated fossils at some of Cope's dig sites
Speaker 1: to slow down his progress too. So it's not just
Speaker 1: invading the other guy's camp and the reputation for honesty there, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that that takes it to another level. So um,
Speaker 1: tampering with the with the science essentially, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and that was the really shocking part of Cope and
Speaker 1: Marks's tactics is that they just they went beyond trying
Speaker 1: to harm and hinder each other in their efforts. They
Speaker 1: actually may have harmed the field itself from maybe even
Speaker 1: hindered scientific progress in some cases. For example, if March's
Speaker 1: guy read unearthed more bones than he could use, he
Speaker 1: smashed them so that Carlin couldn't get to them. Marsh
Speaker 1: is also said to have ordered that certain sites be
Speaker 1: blown up with dynamite to keep Cope from getting to
Speaker 1: the fossils, although, according to a two thousand eight article
Speaker 1: by gen Viev Jiski, at least when it comes to
Speaker 1: one of the sites that was supposedly blown up, Quary ten,
Speaker 1: which is in Morris Some, Colorado, those allegations are false.
Speaker 1: Some researchers found Quarry ten in two thousand two using
Speaker 1: Lakes's field notes and determined that Lakes probably just shoved
Speaker 1: some dirt in there and then said he dynamited it
Speaker 1: to discourage the competition from checking it out. The way
Speaker 1: I sort of read that though, is maybe he had
Speaker 1: his history of dynamite things already established. Though if people
Speaker 1: were going to believe that could be well. It may
Speaker 1: have been out west that some of the more colorful
Speaker 1: war tactics were used by these two. As we hinted
Speaker 1: in the previous episode, the really decisive battleground for the
Speaker 1: Bone Wars turned out to be Washington, d c. And
Speaker 1: this is where Marsh really pulled ahead, because even though
Speaker 1: he wasn't winning any popularity contests, he was much savvier
Speaker 1: when it came to politics than Cope. Was. The first
Speaker 1: development that really set the ball rolling for Marsh had
Speaker 1: to do with those surveys out west that we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier in the late eighteen seventies early eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: or so, Congress, upon the advice of the National Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences, which by the way, was an organization which
Speaker 1: Marsh had become president of, decided to do away with
Speaker 1: all of the existing competing geological surveys and create just
Speaker 1: one national geological survey to replace them. They decided to
Speaker 1: call it the United States Geological Survey, and the former
Speaker 1: head of one of the defunct surveys Marsh had been
Speaker 1: affiliated with, was named as the director. Uh So, soon
Speaker 1: Marsh became the official vertebrate paleontologist of the United States
Speaker 1: Geological Survey. Not too surprising there, if if he's the
Speaker 1: head of the National Academy of Sciences already, he knows
Speaker 1: the new head of the Geological Survey. Uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was certainly at this point winning the feud in
Speaker 1: terms of political clout in the science world, in terms
Speaker 1: of how his career was progressing. When Cope lost that
Speaker 1: government support, it really devastated his research too, and his
Speaker 1: publication efforts. He just didn't have any funding anymore, and
Speaker 1: his personal wealth, which he had also put toward his
Speaker 1: efforts in paleontology over all these years, was starting to
Speaker 1: dry up. Cope, looking for a get rich quick sort
Speaker 1: of scheme, tried to make up for it by investing
Speaker 1: in a silver mine in New Mexico, but that turned
Speaker 1: out to be a bust. He lost everything, and uh
Speaker 1: it really seemed at this point where that there was
Speaker 1: a clear winner and loser in this feud, but that
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be enough for Marsh. He took things
Speaker 1: a step further and tried to have Cope's fossils confiscated,
Speaker 1: claiming that they had been collected with government funds. Cope
Speaker 1: completely denied this. He said that he had used his
Speaker 1: own money to collect the fossils. And then he decided
Speaker 1: to fight back against Marsh and the only way that
Speaker 1: he could at that point, and that was through the press.
Speaker 1: He approached a writer for the New York Herald and
Speaker 1: told that writer basically every bad thing that he had
Speaker 1: ever thought or heard about Marsh, and this kicked off
Speaker 1: a very public, very brutal battle of words between Cope
Speaker 1: and Marsh that was splashed all over the pages of
Speaker 1: the New York Herald between January twelfth, eighteen eighty in
Speaker 1: January eighteen eighty under headlines like scientists wage bitter warfare.
Speaker 1: And they went way back in their relationship too. They
Speaker 1: weren't just considering the last few years as their at
Speaker 1: their ammo um. They went back to the beginning. According
Speaker 1: to hunting Kin's article, Cope said things like Marsh was quote,
Speaker 1: unable to properly classify and name the fossils his explorers secured.
Speaker 1: It's pretty damning. Uh. He said that Marsh took credit
Speaker 1: for his assistance work, and he also accused Marsh and
Speaker 1: the U S Geological Survey of corruption and Mithews of
Speaker 1: government funds, which is pretty key here. For his part,
Speaker 1: Marsh brought up how Cope rushed to get his discoveries
Speaker 1: into print, you know, before they were ready, often making
Speaker 1: errors in the process. He also brought up that embarrassing
Speaker 1: mistake with the elasmosaur, among other things. We discussed that
Speaker 1: in the in the last podcast, flipping the head and
Speaker 1: tail of the dinosaur and then having Marsh be the
Speaker 1: one to point it out. This newspaper feud didn't last long,
Speaker 1: but it was really damaging to both of their reputation,
Speaker 1: so nobody won. In this instance, Cope struggled to find
Speaker 1: a buyer for his massive fossil collection because he needed
Speaker 1: the money. Eventually he could only sell part of it,
Speaker 1: and then he hit the lecture circuit and tried to
Speaker 1: secure a paying position at a college. He didn't have
Speaker 1: that backing behind him that Marsh had at Yale. I
Speaker 1: think I saw him described in one spot as a
Speaker 1: rogue rogue scientist or a rogue paleontologist, and now he
Speaker 1: has all this bad press out too exactly, so doubly
Speaker 1: he he just doesn't have anyone to go to at
Speaker 1: that point. It just proved to be really tough to
Speaker 1: find a pain position. According to Panix article. He finally
Speaker 1: got a position though, and a small salary, at the
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania in eighteen eighty nine, and he turned
Speaker 1: out to be a pretty good teacher. But of course
Speaker 1: that wasn't his life school, that's not what he had
Speaker 1: really wanted. He died in eight of renal failure at
Speaker 1: age fifty six according to PBS, and not right away,
Speaker 1: but in a couple of years. Congress did investigate the
Speaker 1: u S geological surveys use of funds and ended up
Speaker 1: cutting their funding and completely doing away with the Department
Speaker 1: of Paleontology. Marsh was forced to resign, and for the
Speaker 1: first time he had to accept a salary from Yale.
Speaker 1: He died of pneumonia in eighteen nine, two years after Marsh,
Speaker 1: at the age of sixty seven. He only had a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty six dollars in his bank account. When
Speaker 1: he died of all that Peabody money that had come
Speaker 1: to him. His collection ended up in the Smithsonian and
Speaker 1: at Yale, and part of Cope's collection ended up at
Speaker 1: the American Museum of Natural History. That's like, those are
Speaker 1: the two or the three winners in the story. I
Speaker 1: think the places in us too. You know that we
Speaker 1: can go see them today. Yeah, and that there's this
Speaker 1: interesting story for us to look into. But looking at
Speaker 1: this result there doesn't really seem to be like a
Speaker 1: winner at the end. Neither of these guys seemed to
Speaker 1: really come out on top. But of course they were
Speaker 1: both very accomplished overall, and they both made major contributions
Speaker 1: to science. If you stuck up some of their accomplishments
Speaker 1: those side by side, what does it look like? We
Speaker 1: wanted to take a look at that, So first we'll
Speaker 1: look at the naming part of it. Well, March seemed
Speaker 1: to win when it came to naming dinosaur species. He
Speaker 1: named eighty six out of thet some odd ones that
Speaker 1: they named. Total. Cope published war though according to Science Scope,
Speaker 1: his record of twelve hundred publications is still unbeaten. Wow,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that is not too surprising he
Speaker 1: won that side of the battle. Um Marsh notably provided
Speaker 1: evidence for the theory of evolution, to which Darwin himself
Speaker 1: called quote the best support of the theory of evolution
Speaker 1: at the time. Um He found thirty specimens, for example,
Speaker 1: that allowed him to outline the evolutionary history of the horse,
Speaker 1: and he recognized similarities of the modern bird in extinct dinosaurs. Cope,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, because of his religious convictions, probably
Speaker 1: didn't support Darwin's theory. But as science Scope points out,
Speaker 1: he's known for Cope's rule, which is the observation that
Speaker 1: organisms of a species tend to get larger over time
Speaker 1: than the fossil records. So it just depends on what
Speaker 1: you're judging them by, which one of them one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and it certainly made me wonder too how much
Speaker 1: they accomplished because they did have the other one they're
Speaker 1: competing and egging him on, or whether they could have
Speaker 1: accomplished more if they had worked in better concert together
Speaker 1: than they did, not trying to sabotage each other's work
Speaker 1: as much. No, but it's interesting, just another tidbit here.
Speaker 1: Their competition continued a little bit even after the grave,
Speaker 1: about a century after Cope's death, national geographic photographer Luis
Speaker 1: Sahoyo Scott cope skull from the University of Pennsylvania. Cope
Speaker 1: had willed his body to science, so this was available,
Speaker 1: and he took the skull with him as he traveled
Speaker 1: around the world interviewing paleontologists for a book, and he
Speaker 1: referred to the skull as he was doing this as Eddie. Later,
Speaker 1: he and paleontologist Robert Baker tried to have cope skull
Speaker 1: named as the hype specimen, which means that it would
Speaker 1: have been the standard of a species to which all
Speaker 1: others are compared. He wanted to have it named as
Speaker 1: a type specimen for Homo sapiens, but it turned out
Speaker 1: that the late botanist Careless Linnaeus had already been named
Speaker 1: the type specimen for Homo sapiens. So thank goodness for
Speaker 1: Linnaeus able to to step in there with his skull
Speaker 1: and and stop this feud from continuing after death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read elsewhere that one reason that Cope will his
Speaker 1: body to sciences that he wanted them to compare his
Speaker 1: skull size to Marsha's after Marsh died, But Marsh didn't
Speaker 1: leave any sort of instructions to have his skull studied
Speaker 1: after the fact, so they didn't ever get to resolve
Speaker 1: that question. I think that's for the best. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: better just to look at the story, look at their accomplishments,
Speaker 1: and decide for yourself. I think who's the winner. But
Speaker 1: I'm curious for listeners to write in and tell us
Speaker 1: if they have a favorite in this war. I know
Speaker 1: that in the War of the Currents, for example, Tesla
Speaker 1: was the overwhelming favorite among our listeners at least, And
Speaker 1: so I wonder, Cope or Marsh do you have a favorite? Terah,
Speaker 1: who do you think you would have been pals with? I? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know. Do I think the guy
Speaker 1: who didn't have any friends? I mean, odds are You're
Speaker 1: a nice person, so I could see I should have
Speaker 1: made friends with Marsh. I don't know they I found
Speaker 1: myself during this story kind of rooting for each of them,
Speaker 1: and I think that for each of them, and then
Speaker 1: thinking that they were each terrible, terrible people. So maybe
Speaker 1: I'll pass on the Yeah, okay, you're taking your pleading
Speaker 1: the fifth. Yeah, do you have a Do you have
Speaker 1: a pick? I mean, I guess I sort of agree
Speaker 1: with you, although I found myself sympathizing with Cope a
Speaker 1: little bit more. And maybe it's because some of the
Speaker 1: articles that I read were more biased in that direction.
Speaker 1: But I think it may also have a lot to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that, at least from what I read,
Speaker 1: from the evidence that I saw, it seemed that Marsh
Speaker 1: kind of did the dirtier stuff, like the dynamiting of
Speaker 1: dig sites. I didn't like that at all, So that's
Speaker 1: not cool. Maybe Cop did it too, but I didn't
Speaker 1: read any evidence that he had. Okay, I'll stick to
Speaker 1: the Braunosaurus. Stick with the brontosaurus. There you go, friends, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: before we go off to too far on a dinosaur tangent.
Speaker 1: So we have a very special listener meal today, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you say, to Blina, Special and delicious, Special and delicious.
Speaker 1: It's a bottle of wine. Yeah, it's a gift we
Speaker 1: got in the mail. We got it from listener Dana.
Speaker 1: And what's it called again, It's called Brushelle Vineyards Rose.
Speaker 1: We're gonna try it out after our recording session. But um,
Speaker 1: we wanted to read Dana's note too, because she had
Speaker 1: some ideas for future podcast too. She wrote Derris to
Speaker 1: Blina and Sarah, Greetings from Paso Robless, California. My husband
Speaker 1: and I work in the wine industry out here, and
Speaker 1: we just finished a very long and grueling harvest feed sin.
Speaker 1: My husband admitted that your podcast helped him through all
Speaker 1: the brute donkey work that harvesting tails from pits to
Speaker 1: punch downs to the bottling line. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: say thank you for providing such a welcome day version
Speaker 1: during the most exhausting time of the year. Of course,
Speaker 1: we do love it. She went on to say, please
Speaker 1: accept this bottle of rose from the wine or a
Speaker 1: work at as our humble thanks. Sorry to Bolina, it
Speaker 1: isn't sweet, but I grew up in Atlanta, and I
Speaker 1: guarantee it's what my mom called a quote porch founder.
Speaker 1: That's while we're for for after the episode. Um. But
Speaker 1: she She went on to say too that she figured
Speaker 1: she would use this opportunity to say that the historic
Speaker 1: alcohol series we did with their favorite obvious reasons, but
Speaker 1: she really wanted us to revisit wine as a topic
Speaker 1: at some point, and a lot of listeners have been
Speaker 1: suggesting this lately. Um something else on wine. Her suggestions
Speaker 1: in particular were the quote cunning wealthy wine barrens of
Speaker 1: the offs child Dan dynasty or the story of why
Speaker 1: Charlemagne's wife insisted Burgundy plant more white grapes. She went
Speaker 1: on to say, it's very funny, I promise so cool idea.
Speaker 1: Thank you Dana for for some wine suggestions and for
Speaker 1: the look. We're looking forward to it, thank you so much. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's a lovely gift and a lovely thing to enjoy,
Speaker 1: but we're unfortunately going to be partaking of it for
Speaker 1: kind of sad reasons. We're happy, happy and sad for us,
Speaker 1: but happy for our producer and editor, Lizzie, who has
Speaker 1: been with us for a long time. She's been editing
Speaker 1: this podcast for a very long time, and she's moving
Speaker 1: on to another really wonderful opportunity. Lizzie is a fabulous
Speaker 1: photographer and she's going to be pursuing that a little
Speaker 1: bit more directly, and we're gonna miss her so much.
Speaker 1: We are. Lizzie is so fun to work with. She
Speaker 1: always has good comments on on what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's always fun to rehash the subjects with her after
Speaker 1: recording and sort of let slip our secret opinions on
Speaker 1: certain topic and she always makes wonderful things happen in
Speaker 1: the editing process. Whenever we have any crazy idea about
Speaker 1: inserting music into the podcast or anything like that, she
Speaker 1: always helps us work it out or just cleaning us up,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, making us sound good. Um. But we
Speaker 1: are so happy for Lizzie to go off to new
Speaker 1: and better things. And um, like de Blanta just said,
Speaker 1: she's a fantastic photographer. She has a website, Lizzie photo
Speaker 1: dot com. It's Lizzie with a why as it took
Speaker 1: me way too long to why do we learn? Um,
Speaker 1: But she's great. Good luck, We will miss you. Good luck, Lizzie,
Speaker 1: you will be missed. To keep in touch with us,
Speaker 1: and um, hopefully we'll get to see a lot of
Speaker 1: your great work out there very soon. So on that note,
Speaker 1: we want to wrap it up and invite anyone who
Speaker 1: wants to to write to us with ideas, comments, questions,
Speaker 1: anything that is on your mind. We're at History Podcast
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com. You can also find us on
Speaker 1: Facebook and we're on Twitter at Myston History. And as
Speaker 1: we mentioned in the last Bone Wars episode, we have
Speaker 1: so many articles on dinosaurs. We actually have a site
Speaker 1: director who loves dinosaurs, so it ensures that we are
Speaker 1: well stocked on all topics paleontology related, So go check
Speaker 1: that out. It's all in our science section on www.
Speaker 1: Dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com.