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The Bone Wars: Dinosaurs and Destruction
In the 1870s, two paleontologists set out to discover dinosaurs and ended up discovering new depths of human pettiness instead. Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh started as friends, became enemies over a fossil quarry in New Jersey, and spent the next thirty years dynamiting each other's dig sites, planting spies in each other's camps, and going to war in the newspapers. They both died broke. The dinosaurs, at least, were real.
Snarkives Podcasts will always be free to listen.
If you want to help keep the lights on, Moxie in treats, and me caffeinated enough to keep posting episodes, you can toss a few dollars in the tip jar:
https://ko-fi.com/snarkives
Sources
Mark Jaffe, The Gilded Dinosaur (Crown, 2000) https://amzn.to/4nKaK4V
Leonard Warren, Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything (Yale University Press, 1998)
Jane P. Davidson, The Bone Sharp: The Life of Edward Drinker Cope (Academy of Natural Sciences, 1997)
Paul D. Brinkman, The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
New York Herald, January 12 and 19, 1890 — "Scientists Wage Bitter Warfare"
Episode image: O.C. Marsh, Stegosaurus illustration, US Geological Survey, 1896. Public domain.
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By Professor Angie Bouma PhDIn the 1870s, two paleontologists set out to discover dinosaurs and ended up discovering new depths of human pettiness instead. Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh started as friends, became enemies over a fossil quarry in New Jersey, and spent the next thirty years dynamiting each other's dig sites, planting spies in each other's camps, and going to war in the newspapers. They both died broke. The dinosaurs, at least, were real.
Snarkives Podcasts will always be free to listen.
If you want to help keep the lights on, Moxie in treats, and me caffeinated enough to keep posting episodes, you can toss a few dollars in the tip jar:
https://ko-fi.com/snarkives
Sources
Mark Jaffe, The Gilded Dinosaur (Crown, 2000) https://amzn.to/4nKaK4V
Leonard Warren, Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything (Yale University Press, 1998)
Jane P. Davidson, The Bone Sharp: The Life of Edward Drinker Cope (Academy of Natural Sciences, 1997)
Paul D. Brinkman, The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
New York Herald, January 12 and 19, 1890 — "Scientists Wage Bitter Warfare"
Episode image: O.C. Marsh, Stegosaurus illustration, US Geological Survey, 1896. Public domain.