THE
GILDED DINOSAUR: The Fossil War between E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh and
the Rise of American Science, by Mark Jaffe. 424 pages, illustrated.
Crown, $25
Just
about any history book about dinosaurs contains a few pages about the
spirited competition between Yale's O.C. Marsh and Philadelphia's
Edward Cope to find fossils – especially dinosaur fossils – in
the West during the late 19th century. Beyond the funny
anecdote about Cope putting the skull on the wrong end of
Elasmosaurus and Marsh sending his agents to kidnap boxes of bones
gathered for Cope, most authors don't go.
It
turns out there was a lot more to it than that.
Sure
enough the anecdotes are memorable: Marsh and his pony Pawnee caught
in a huge buffalo stampede, Cope being saved by his pony from going
over a cliff in the dark, both men risking their skins to prospect
for bones in the middle of the Indian wars.
Jaffe
makes a good case that the irascible Marsh and the cantankerous Cope
had a lot to do with the professionalization and bureaucratization of
American science – and with its support by the federal government.
When
they were young and poor, the number of professional scientists in
America was in the low hundreds, and ambitious researchers had to go
to Germany. Before they were through, America had thousands of
professional scientists, and government expenditures on them dwarfed
the public support of research of all the rest of the world together.
It
couldn't have happened that way if Cope and Marsh hadn't inherited
fortunes, and spent them on research. But presumably it could have
happened without all the rancor and backstabbing.
And
presumably it could not have happened if both Marsh and Cope had not
had some admirable human qualities, which, however, they often
managed to conceal.
Even
by the standards of the Victorian years, when conformity was optional
for the rich, Marsh and Cope were singular.
Marsh
treated his helpers with contempt but worked hard to try to make the
government fulfill its obligations to the Sioux. He earned the
gratitude of Red Cloud.
Cope
treated his helpers better but his friends worse.
Marsh
was meticulous and secretive, Cope was careless and publicity-hungry.
As enemies, they fitted together as perfectly as a key in a lock, or,
perhaps, a femur in a pelvis. It was almost comical that toward the
end, Marsh, who had exposed Cope's Elasmosaurus error, made a similar
error by inventing Brontosaurus, an error Cope gleefully pounced on.
While
the story is absorbing, “The Gilded Dinosaur” is the worst book I
have ever read for errors. There are thousands. In fact, it looks
like an uncorrected proof, but it was issued by Crown as a completed
book.
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