Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Air and Manky.
Speaker 2: The Victorian Age was a time of wonder. The people
Speaker 2: were experiencing things that felt nothing short of magical. They
Speaker 2: saw their cities light up with electricity. They sat for
Speaker 2: new fangled cameras and took home images of themselves on
Speaker 2: silver plates. Cable lines carried their telegrams to loved ones
Speaker 2: thousands of miles away. Their disembodied voices flowed through telephone receivers.
Speaker 2: They also witnessed the invention of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, of course,
Speaker 2: lived and died far before anyone, let alone people of
Speaker 2: the Victorian era, ever stepped foot on this planet. But
Speaker 2: it was this generation when the dinosaur's story began again.
Speaker 2: Humans had been unearthing strangely fossilized bones and other remains
Speaker 2: for centuries, but what were they, exactly where did they
Speaker 2: come from? The debate had long been heated. Some believed
Speaker 2: they were left by the devil, others thought they were
Speaker 2: remnants of Noah's flood. At the time in Europe, most
Speaker 2: didn't realize that these were the remains of creatures who
Speaker 2: had lived a very long time ago. The study of
Speaker 2: these remnants began to codify in the seventeen hundreds, as
Speaker 2: paleontology got its start. The term finds its origin in
Speaker 2: the Greek words for ancient palaeo, being anto and study ology.
Speaker 2: Curious minds began to classify and label these bits and
Speaker 2: pieces of ancient beings, trying to make sense of what
Speaker 2: they once were. Fossils supported the theories presented in Charles
Speaker 2: Darwin's On the Origin of the Species, which to the
Speaker 2: Victorian mind was either hugely exciting or hugely blasphemed. In
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty one, Britain launched their Great Exhibition, a showing
Speaker 2: of magnificent resources pillaged from their colonies. They hired a
Speaker 2: man by the name of Joseph Paxton to design and
Speaker 2: construct a showcase, and he did just that, building a
Speaker 2: massive structure of steel and glass, naming it the Crystal Palace.
Speaker 2: A British sculptor and natural history illustrator, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins,
Speaker 2: was hired to fill it up. Benjamin was taken by
Speaker 2: the ideas of the natural world and had designs on
Speaker 2: giving humanity something that had never seen before. He set
Speaker 2: his sights on creating sculptures of all kinds of extinct
Speaker 2: animals and placing them among greenery. He received advice from
Speaker 2: famed paleontologist Sir Richard Owen, the fellow who had only
Speaker 2: recently coined the word dinosaur, and so Benjamin got to work.
Speaker 2: He looked at notes, diagrams, and the fossils themselves. He
Speaker 2: had a lot of parts, but not a lot of
Speaker 2: direction for how to assemble them. But he had his
Speaker 2: artistic sensibility and a vague understanding of anatomy, and knew
Speaker 2: how to take big swings. What was also true was
Speaker 2: that no one was going to know if he was wrong.
Speaker 2: Benjamin began constructing his hulking beasts with a combination of clay, brick, tiles,
Speaker 2: and cement, all supported on iron columns. Some contained thirty
Speaker 2: tons of clay. He built thirty three different creatures and
Speaker 2: placed them in the palace's green gardens. These were the
Speaker 2: first life sized models of dinosaurs ever constructed. Visitors could
Speaker 2: walk right up to a creature that supposedly existed many
Speaker 2: millions of years ago, something that seemed inconceivable to the
Speaker 2: minds of so many The sculptures ended up being wildly
Speaker 2: popular and are still on display in London today. In retrospect,
Speaker 2: Benjamin statues are rife with error, and to our modern eye,
Speaker 2: sometimes silly looking, but they represented some thing hugely important.
Speaker 2: They've acted as touchstones by which we can measure scientific
Speaker 2: progress and acknowledge our own evolutions in thought and theory.
Speaker 2: If the Victorians thought they knew a lot, then it's
Speaker 2: become more clear in contemporary times how much we simply
Speaker 2: don't know. Today paleo illustrators are constantly updating what they
Speaker 2: know about dinosaurs and trying to more accurately represent them.
Speaker 2: It's a tall order to try to perfectly recreate an
Speaker 2: animal based only on its fossils. Even still, we feel
Speaker 2: compelled to know who and what has walked before us.
Speaker 2: And for some this question has turned into a fascination,
Speaker 2: which then morphed into obsession. And where obsession arises, so
Speaker 2: often does a good story. I'm Lauren Bogelbaum. Welcome to
Speaker 2: American Shadows. When Andrew Carnegie unfolded his newspaper that morning
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety nine, he read the front page, headlined
Speaker 2: exclaiming that the most colossal animal ever on Earth had
Speaker 2: been discovered. He knew that it had to be his.
Speaker 2: There was nothing that the richest man in the world
Speaker 2: wanted that he couldn't have. Andrew Carnegie was a product
Speaker 2: and poster boy of the Gilded Age. It was a
Speaker 2: time of glitter and gold, of ostentatious wealth and opulence.
Speaker 2: Author Mark Twain coined the term to characterize the new
Speaker 2: American aristocracy that was on the rise in the period
Speaker 2: after the Civil War. The country was hitting a growth spurt.
Speaker 2: The railroads and laws benefiting industrial production infused the country
Speaker 2: with jobs and money, But underneath that guilt veneer there
Speaker 2: was darkness and corruption. A new class of people were
Speaker 2: forged at this moment. The industrialists the money largely lined
Speaker 2: their pockets and created a system of social inequity unlike
Speaker 2: anything America had ever seen before. They wielded power unmatched
Speaker 2: by politicians and often made the rules by which others
Speaker 2: had to play. The tycoons and lawmakers scratched each other's
Speaker 2: backs and cut back room deals, amassing wealth while exploiting
Speaker 2: the working class. Every major business, from railroads to timber, meatpacking,
Speaker 2: to steel and oil to tobacco, came under the pull
Speaker 2: of these captains of industry. That money needed to go somewhere,
Speaker 2: a spending became almost a performance art, as the moneyed
Speaker 2: class erected massive homes, through lavish parties and curated exquisite collections.
Speaker 2: Carnegie was able to purchase the dinosaur that he had
Speaker 2: read about, but it fell short of his expectations. It
Speaker 2: just wasn't grand enough not to be discouraged. He commissioned
Speaker 2: his own fossil hunting team to find a dinosaur that
Speaker 2: was going to be bigger and better than anything anyone
Speaker 2: had ever seen, and they did just that, discovering a
Speaker 2: fossil in Wyoming that was over seventy feet long and
Speaker 2: weighed more than fourteen tons. This new species was named
Speaker 2: after him, the Diplodocus carnegie Eye. Andrew Carnegie was just
Speaker 2: one of many who hopped on the prehistoric bandwagon. The
Speaker 2: rich loved their dinosaurs. They were big, they were expensive
Speaker 2: to find, they were rare, there were limited quantities of them.
Speaker 2: These qualifications created a national hunger that many would go
Speaker 2: to great lengths to satisfy. The moment leading up to
Speaker 2: Carnegie's purchase was marked by a blazing period of intense excavation,
Speaker 2: spearheaded by two men entangled in an intense rivalry off.
Speaker 2: Neil Marsh, the first professor of paleontology in the United States,
Speaker 2: and Edward Cope, a wealthy enthusiast, had long been a pair,
Speaker 2: embattled and embittered, dueling for palaeontological supremacy, power, and fame.
Speaker 2: These two men were different worlds. As individuals, they embodied
Speaker 2: the social and economic differences of the Gilded Age. Marsh
Speaker 2: was born on October twenty ninth of eighteen thirty one
Speaker 2: in Lockport, New York, to a family with little money
Speaker 2: in fewer connections. His father was a farmer and his
Speaker 2: mother was soon dead. Marsh's mother had been the younger
Speaker 2: sister of George Peabody, a wealthy banker and philanthropist. Marsh
Speaker 2: might have gone on to become a farmer like his father,
Speaker 2: but his uncle stepped in and paid for his education.
Speaker 2: He eventually made his way to Yale, where he became
Speaker 2: utterly taken by Darwin and his new ideas on evolution.
Speaker 2: This would become his life's work, and he soon went
Speaker 2: on to pursue an education at the University of Berlin.
Speaker 2: It was there, in eighteen sixty three that he met
Speaker 2: a wealthy, fiery classmate named Edward Cope. They shared similar
Speaker 2: interests and friends, though their approaches to life and study
Speaker 2: were radically different. Marsh was studious and regimented a while
Speaker 2: Cope took a more unconventional approach to his education, preferring travel,
Speaker 2: on the job, training, and mentorship. The Cope saw Darwin's
Speaker 2: origin of the species as the key to unlocking the
Speaker 2: secrets of life on Earth, whereas Marsh harbored more conventional
Speaker 2: religious beliefs and regarded life as a project and intentional
Speaker 2: gradual design. Even so, both remained in touch after they
Speaker 2: returned to the United States and kicked off their palaeontological careers.
Speaker 2: In time, they would even name some new discoveries after
Speaker 2: each other. Cope and Marsh continued their relationship via correspondence,
Speaker 2: sending manuscripts of papers they planned to write, along with
Speaker 2: fossils and photos back and forth. They could have been
Speaker 2: great collaborators, but instead, as it often does, greed got
Speaker 2: in their way. The road to success wouldn't be paved
Speaker 2: in bones for these two men, it was often paved
Speaker 2: with sabotage. The Great dinosaur Rush was about to begin.
Speaker 2: Cope and Marsh had a love hate relationship in frenemies.
Speaker 2: If you will. They respected each other's brilliance in verve,
Speaker 2: but simmering under all of that were egos that needed
Speaker 2: to be sated. Upon their returns from Berlin, Cope and
Speaker 2: Marsh worked together on many digs, celebrating and squabbling in
Speaker 2: equal measure. But one project in eighteen sixty eight would
Speaker 2: set the stage for their greatest disagreement yet. Southern New
Speaker 2: Jersey is home to a singular deposit of this strange,
Speaker 2: beautiful green sand, leftover from a time millions of years
Speaker 2: ago when the place was underwater. It's rich in glauconite,
Speaker 2: a green mineral that characterizes the deposit, and also it
Speaker 2: seems rich in fossils. A Cope wanted to dig there,
Speaker 2: and he invited Marsh to come along. They set out
Speaker 2: to New Jersey to make some discoveries, make some names,
Speaker 2: and make some money. They knew that everything that could
Speaker 2: be found there would be incredibly valuable, especially now that
Speaker 2: more people were collecting fossils than ever before. They hired
Speaker 2: teams of people to help them. The dirty business of
Speaker 2: digging up fossils required many hands and lots of organization,
Speaker 2: so it was imperative that they find the right labor
Speaker 2: to do the job. Scouts and site managers, operators and
Speaker 2: diggers were soon on site for their part. Cope and
Speaker 2: Marsh analyzed, cataloged, and then shipped these discoveries back to
Speaker 2: their offices via hired railroad workers. And because this was
Speaker 2: Cope's dig, anything that was discovered technically belonged to him.
Speaker 2: It's here in these silty green sands they unearthed all
Speaker 2: kinds of beautiful creatures, including ancient turtles and crocodiles that
Speaker 2: died over sixty six million years ago. They found dinosaur
Speaker 2: bones and giant sea bound lizards. As they broke down
Speaker 2: camp and parted ways, they shook hands amicably and wished
Speaker 2: each other well. But what Cope didn't realize was that
Speaker 2: Marsh had bribed the laborers to siphon off some of
Speaker 2: their fines back to his office in New Haven, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: And when Cope soon learned about this, he felt utterly
Speaker 2: betrayed and absolutely furious. This, however, didn't stop them from
Speaker 2: continuing to work together. They admired each other intensely, bitterly,
Speaker 2: and jealously. They each knew the other had connections, institutional resources,
Speaker 2: and smarts, which further fanned the flames of their rivalry.
Speaker 2: At times they were the best of frenemies. They would
Speaker 2: do almost anything to get a leg up on the other.
Speaker 2: Both had great personal wealth and were willing to throw
Speaker 2: money at their problems. It didn't take them long to
Speaker 2: start playing dirtier. Even though fossil hunting began on the
Speaker 2: East coast, the situation soon became the Wheiled West, a
Speaker 2: total free for all in the race for scientific glory
Speaker 2: and the money that came with truly rare and unique fines.
Speaker 2: In one instance, Marsh publicly humiliated Cope when he pointed
Speaker 2: out that his reconstruction of a water bound plesiosaur called
Speaker 2: an elasmosaurus was incorrect because in his reconstruction, Cope had
Speaker 2: put the head at the end of the short tail
Speaker 2: instead of at the end of the long neck. After
Speaker 2: they called in other experts to settle the dispute, a
Speaker 2: Cope was horrified to realize that he and everything he
Speaker 2: had recently published about his discovery was indeed incorrect. The
Speaker 2: whole field became a battleground for their squabbling as they
Speaker 2: rushed to both pull in other scientists and flood the
Speaker 2: field with their own publishing. As they rushed, they got sloppy,
Speaker 2: Cope started pushing further west into Kansas and Wyoming, what
Speaker 2: Marsh considered his territory for finding fossils. It was a
Speaker 2: gentleman's understand that each had their own turf, but Cope
Speaker 2: decided he would no longer abide by these arbitrary rules.
Speaker 2: Any kind of warmth between them chilled in eighteen seventy two.
Speaker 2: As they pushed further and further west, they became desperate
Speaker 2: to outdo each other, pumping more and more resources into
Speaker 2: digging up the earth. They also weren't actually at the
Speaker 2: pits that were being excavated. They relied solely young collectors
Speaker 2: to get them what they wanted and to ship everything
Speaker 2: back east. It was an exercise of trust, it seems,
Speaker 2: and in the haze of paranoia around their own relationship
Speaker 2: a Cope and Marsh failed to realize the secondary duplicity
Speaker 2: at hand. You see, the market for bones and other
Speaker 2: fossils was prone to fraud. There was no established regulatory
Speaker 2: framework for how to do all this, and these vines
Speaker 2: often traveled great distances over large amounts of time. It
Speaker 2: was hard to keep track of contracts and laborers. Whatever
Speaker 2: arrived in crates was usually going to be what you got.
Speaker 2: As the railroads moved further west and explorers and colonists followed,
Speaker 2: plenty of lines were established and plenty of hands were
Speaker 2: willing to get paleontologists like Marsh and Cope what they wanted.
Speaker 2: These folks were often paid well by their scientist bosses,
Speaker 2: but the handsome pay didn't necessarily guarantee worker loyalty. Those
Speaker 2: muscling the dirt knew that their labor and their fines
Speaker 2: were in high demand, and their affections could be bought.
Speaker 2: In eighteen seventy three, Marsh wrote publicly that he believed
Speaker 2: half of his discoveries in the West were poached from
Speaker 2: him in this way. In that same year, the scientific
Speaker 2: journal The American Naturalist decided that it would stop publishing
Speaker 2: any materials from either scientist, even though Cope later had
Speaker 2: a huge ownership stake in the publication. There was one dig, though,
Speaker 2: that would prove to end all digs. It was discuss covered.
Speaker 2: The Como Bluff, Wyoming, was home to one of the
Speaker 2: richest bone quarries ever discovered. The bones and other fossils
Speaker 2: at Coma Bluff were discovered in eighteen seventy seven by
Speaker 2: geologist Arthur Lakes. It was a veritable gold mine, one
Speaker 2: of the richest deposits ever found. It would become known
Speaker 2: as the Morrison Formation, a huge span of sediment that
Speaker 2: reaches from New Mexico to Montana. It stretches back, encompassing
Speaker 2: over two hundred million years, and would go on to
Speaker 2: teach us much of what we know about the Jurassic Period.
Speaker 2: At the time, though, all Lakes knew was that this
Speaker 2: was a singular repository, and he quickly sent word back east.
Speaker 2: He tried Marsh first, but Marsh was slow to respond. Impatient,
Speaker 2: he sent some findings to Cope. When Marsh heard this,
Speaker 2: he kicked into gear. Marsh was able to send out
Speaker 2: his representatives first. They reported back that there were miles
Speaker 2: of bones right for the picking. He worked quickly to
Speaker 2: secure the site for himself with all the labor his
Speaker 2: good money could buy. He was eager to get his
Speaker 2: hands on anything that was dug up and promptly started negotiating.
Speaker 2: The specimens were enormous and numerous. Cope, for his part,
Speaker 2: thought nothing of Marsh's claim and refused to be deterred.
Speaker 2: The race was once again on from Marsian Cope and
Speaker 2: although neither was personally at the bluff, they sent workers,
Speaker 2: including former students. It didn't take long for Cope's men
Speaker 2: to start encroaching on the territory that Marsh had staked out.
Speaker 2: Marsh knew that this was where he needed to dig
Speaker 2: to outpace Cope. In truth, Marsh might not have become
Speaker 2: involved with this dig's location at all if Cope hadn't
Speaker 2: sent the team. At that point in his career, Marsh
Speaker 2: was far more interested in mammalion specimens than dinosaur bones,
Speaker 2: but once heard Cope's team had shown up, he refused
Speaker 2: to be outshined. So there they were, warring factions on
Speaker 2: a bluff under the sun, furiously digging and conducting shady dealings.
Speaker 2: Each scientist was determined to get the upper hand and
Speaker 2: started paying more money to their workers to keep them
Speaker 2: digging and keep them loyal. They worked tirelessly back east,
Speaker 2: intercepting huge wooden crates and publishing at a breakneck clip.
Speaker 2: Efforts of other paleontologists who showed up paled in comparison
Speaker 2: to these feverish and bitter operations. They planted fossils and
Speaker 2: locations where they weren't discovered to confuse the other, they
Speaker 2: bribed quarry owners to pull fossils out before they could
Speaker 2: be observed and documented. Their rivalry had become an all
Speaker 2: out war, rife with bad blood and explosions. Literally, it
Speaker 2: was reported that they had ordered the dynamiting of their
Speaker 2: completed dig sites lest any yet to be discovered bones
Speaker 2: fell into the world wrong hands. They continued to fight
Speaker 2: in the pages of academic journals and newspapers. They mutually
Speaker 2: attempted to sabotage each other's funding in efforts to slow
Speaker 2: down their respective careers and stardom. Their community was growing
Speaker 2: tired of the very public performance of their spite and
Speaker 2: called into question their ability to even do their jobs.
Speaker 2: Their work was often sloppy, rife with careless errors, and
Speaker 2: people knew about the shady dealings they were willing to
Speaker 2: engage with in order to bolster their reputations. It's said
Speaker 2: that competition breeds progress, and in one sense this rings true.
Speaker 2: This period was one of the most productive in the
Speaker 2: history of paleontology. Lay people were astounded and captivated by
Speaker 2: their very public duelings and were often inspired by their discoveries.
Speaker 2: Marti and Kpe were able to uncover some of the
Speaker 2: world's most famous dinosaurs that we know and love today
Speaker 2: include the Stegosaurus, the triceratops, the Alosaurus, and eventually one
Speaker 2: of the most fearsome of all, the Tyrannosaurus wrecks. Without
Speaker 2: their flaring tempers and growing contempt for each other, it's
Speaker 2: hard to say what we would know or not know
Speaker 2: about dinosaurs today. But for all the progress that they made,
Speaker 2: their rivalry ultimately destroyed Martian Cope. However, if we were
Speaker 2: asked to tally numbers for a winner and a loser
Speaker 2: in all of this, technically Marsh won their competition. He
Speaker 2: discovered and named eighty new species, compared with copes fifty six.
Speaker 2: Even so, they never quite retired. The rivalry between the
Speaker 2: two men lasted until the day they died, when Cope
Speaker 2: made one last bet. The decades long fight between Marsh
Speaker 2: and Cope ended tragically for both of them after thirty
Speaker 2: years of public feuding. Cope lay dying surrounded by shelves
Speaker 2: full of his beloved specimens to which he had devoted
Speaker 2: his entire life. He had been sick for a long while,
Speaker 2: plagued by chronic illnesses. The nature of those were never determined,
Speaker 2: but he had found ways to self medicate. He didn't
Speaker 2: really trust doctors. Instead, he came up with an all
Speaker 2: natural cure, belladonna. In small doses, it can help with
Speaker 2: all kinds of things, but he didn't take the right doses.
Speaker 2: He took it in small amounts, but too often this
Speaker 2: ultimately would lead to his end. He worked right up
Speaker 2: until he died on April twelfth of eighteen ninety seven. However,
Speaker 2: Cope wasn't content to let the war go, and just
Speaker 2: before he passed, he sent a challenge to Marsh. He
Speaker 2: wrote in his will, I direct that after my funeral,
Speaker 2: my body shall be presented to the Anthropometric Society, and
Speaker 2: then an autopsy shall be performed on it. My brain
Speaker 2: shall be preserved in their collection of brains for future study.
Speaker 2: In effect, Cope wanted to see who had the bigger brain.
Speaker 2: Marsh died on March eighteenth of eighteen ninety nine, effectively
Speaker 2: bringing the Bone Wars to an end. He never did
Speaker 2: turn over his brain to science, so we'll never know
Speaker 2: who the winner of that final battle would have been.
Speaker 2: There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief
Speaker 2: sponsor break to hear all about it. After the Great
Speaker 2: Dinosaur Rush of what became known as the Bone Wars.
Speaker 2: Fossil Hunting continued to be a favorite pastime among the
Speaker 2: wealthy and educated for decades. In nineteen ten, a very
Speaker 2: aristocrat and paleontologist by the name of Ernst freher Stromer
Speaker 2: von Reichenbach set out for a dig in the Egyptian
Speaker 2: desert outside of Cairo. He partnered up with Richard mcgroff,
Speaker 2: an Austrian fossil hunter, and together they found a glorious
Speaker 2: horde of all kinds of marine creatures. But it would
Speaker 2: be two years before their most spectacular discovery of all.
Speaker 2: Sometime between sixty and one hundred million years ago, an
Speaker 2: enormous predator died. It had long spines on its back,
Speaker 2: a crocodile like jaw, and massive teeth. When Ernst came
Speaker 2: upon its skeleton all of those years later, he was stunned.
Speaker 2: In life, this creature was likely unmatched by any foe.
Speaker 2: If it was such an astounding and terrifying proposition in death,
Speaker 2: imagine what it could have been in life. Ernst named
Speaker 2: it Spinosaurus egypticus, or the Egyptian spine lizard. Ernst removed
Speaker 2: the skeleton, then brought it to Munich's Paleontological Museum, and
Speaker 2: there it was proudly on display for many years, bringing
Speaker 2: him great acclaim. It stayed there quietly as a new
Speaker 2: kind of terror rolled through Europe the Nazi Party. Ernst
Speaker 2: was nervous. His sons were fighting on the front lines,
Speaker 2: and he realized that the relentless bombing campaigns posed a
Speaker 2: threat not just to them, but to their treasured artifacts
Speaker 2: as well. He begged the head of the museum to
Speaker 2: move the fossil to safety, but the man was a
Speaker 2: Nazi sympathizer and had long ago stopped listening to anything
Speaker 2: Ernst had to say, political or otherwise. The spinosaurus was
Speaker 2: s mearily destroyed by Allied forces when they dropped a
Speaker 2: bomb on Munich. It died a second death that day,
Speaker 2: living on only in notes and drawings and Ernst's memory.
Speaker 2: He was heartbroken by the magnitude of what the war
Speaker 2: did to his family, his country, and his career, and
Speaker 2: he died soon after in nineteen fifty two. The spinosaurus
Speaker 2: was remembered in the paleontology community as something of a legend.
Speaker 2: There were so many unanswered questions about how and where
Speaker 2: it had lived, and the perfection of the fossil was
Speaker 2: wholly unmatched. It suggested a new kind of dinosaur that
Speaker 2: scientists had never considered, a semi aquatic creatures that thrived
Speaker 2: both on land and in the water. A fully constructed
Speaker 2: spinosaurus had never been discovered before, and there were questions
Speaker 2: as to whether another one ever would. For about another century,
Speaker 2: the spinosaurus drifted into oblivion. That is, of course, until
Speaker 2: a young doctoral student stepped onto the scene. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight. Nazarre Ibrahim was conducting research on the
Speaker 2: border of Morocco and Algeria when he met a local
Speaker 2: Bedouin fossil hunter. Nazar took a close look at the
Speaker 2: specimens he was offered and cataloged the findings in his memory.
Speaker 2: It was a year later when he was shown a
Speaker 2: newly discovered partial skeleton of a potential spinosaurus. Then he
Speaker 2: noticed something some distinct purple and yellow sediment he recognized
Speaker 2: from the year before. He was suddenly struck by the
Speaker 2: idea that he might have accidentally run into two halves
Speaker 2: of a whole dinosaurs. So he went back to Morocco,
Speaker 2: hoping to find his Bedouin friend, but with no cell
Speaker 2: phone number or email address. He hoped for good luck.
Speaker 2: For days, he looked for him, asking all around and
Speaker 2: searching the streets. It all seemed fruitless, until one day
Speaker 2: he was at a cafe and the very same man
Speaker 2: walked by. Nazarre jumped up and chased him down and
Speaker 2: convinced him to bring him to the spot where the
Speaker 2: bones he had initially seen were dug up from. He
Speaker 2: got his wish, and here began the next stage of
Speaker 2: Nazar's life work and that of the Spinosaurus. With new
Speaker 2: science and technology, Nazar has been hard at work putting
Speaker 2: together the life story of the spinosaurus and picking up
Speaker 2: where Ernst left off. We may never know the whole
Speaker 2: truth as to how these creatures lived and died, but
Speaker 2: science is allowing us to paint a more complete picture.
Speaker 2: The debates will long continue over these animals, and careers
Speaker 2: and reputations will be staked on who can make the
Speaker 2: more convincing and compelling argument. We may never know everything,
Speaker 2: but that won't stop us from trying.
Speaker 1: American Shadows as hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Robin Miniature, researched by Ali Steed, and produced
Speaker 1: by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
Speaker 1: visit grimminmile dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.