The department of paleobiology at the Smithsonians National museum of Natural History has received a speech in from harvard university. Previously, he as Vice President arch and at the Royal Ontario Museum in toronto and was a professor of zoology at the university of toronto. From 2004 to 2009, cancer served as associate director for research and collections at the National Museum of natural. He published extensively on dinosaurs and other extinct vertebrates. Hes done a lot of media appearances with america and europe, and with that, please join in welcoming our very own monsters. Okay. Good evening. Its my pleasure to talk to you today about one of the strangest episodes in the history of science in the united, the infamous bone wars. This happened during the 19th century, and it seemed for many years my paleontology had sort of a dark shadow over it because thought this was really a science for very strange people. But the thing was that over time we realized that in fact these bone was actually also had an upset. And im trying to talk to you today about a little bit about the downside and upside of this peculiar episode in history now as you heard im a paleontologist i study ancient organisms and being historical science. I also have a keen interest in the history of academic disciplines and in this context that i have collected and read and studied a lot of primary materials related to both the combatants in this peculiar exercise and the many books on the bone wars, most of which a lot of incorrect information. But there was also a very nice pbs program on it. But the fascination this continues and people keep an earth in new details about actually happened in all those and there was even a plan at some point to make movie out of the whole thing with. Steve carell as one of the people, edward cope and James Gandolfi as professor marsh. Fortunately, nothing came of it. I think that both actors, both i like it must have similarity to either character or appearance. The two combatants were. Othniel charles marsh, who spent most of his career at yale and edward cope, who was based in philadelphia and for time taught at pennsylvania, but also was closely associated with the academy of natural sciences. Philadelphia, which was the first major Natural History. The United States long predate our own museum, since both gentlemen had very different backgrounds and. Before i get into the bone wars, i would like to introduce you a little bit to biographical backgrounds. First with Edward Drinker Cope. He descended from a very wealthy and prominent family in philadelphia. All of his both his grandfather and father were a major shipping shipping magnates who ran a regular Parcel Service between philadelphia and liverpool and also in the owned a lot of real estate in pitt, philadelphia, the region around philadelphia here. And so i grew up in a very comfortable background and we both grandfather and father, very prominent members in the philadelphia, society of friends. And so he was early on introduced into that community. He went through Excellent Schools there. And for time briefly attended haverford college, which was a Major College supported by the society of friends, young Edward Drinker Cope was already a very precocious child. Theres a picture of him at age ten as the only baby picture ive ever found of him, even at very age. He was interested in natural. He would roam outside on his fathers farm to look at any insects, birds whatever. Had a few turtles. But he also loved to go to the academy of natural sciences, which had great exhibits of fossils skeletons, minerals and other things that he was keenly interested in. And i show you here a that he made as a child of a ichthyosaurs skeleton, which is remarkably accurate. In fact, i dont think most of my former students would have drawn anything like this. And you can see that he was really very observant of the details. This is a fairly large animal, and you really have to look very closely to see all of the details that depicted here. However, cope was not really interested in college and university. He, as i said, briefly, attended haverford university, probably more through his familys influence than anything else. They ultimately sort of managed to get in and basically honorary master of arts. But, you know, he didnt have a proper college education. However, he did spend a great of time at the academy of sciences where he came under the supervision of Joseph Lighty was a american naturalist in the 19th century who has something described as the last man who ever knew everything he wrote on gemstones. He was paleontologist was a leading expert on human and wrote the standard textbook for medical students used in the 19th century. And he was one of the fathers of parasitology. Fact, he was the first person to realize that was caused by parasites any more. So lady was a very affable, gentle person, and so he was a great supervisor for cope and basically called probes to the collections, dissect things, stabby things. And so cope actually built up very a really solid knowledge of Natural History and started already in his early twenties on various topics such as snake anatomy, snake classification and various other subjects related to modern animals. However, academy of natural sciences, thanks to the efforts of Joseph Lighty, also was accumulating very large collections of fossils and at some point cope just got hooked on the fossils and focused his studies on these particular specimens like he had first come to the attention of the American Public as the discovery of americas first dinosaur. This dinosaur was in a mound pit in the town of haddonfield, new jersey, just across the river from philadelphia. And these small pits were being actively quarried at the time, because small is a clay substance that is very rich in Calcium Carbonate and phosphate. And this marble was used as fertilizer by farmers across the country. So this was a major industry that only vanished. The arrival of artificial devices later in the 19th century. On your right you see a picture of the market from the bones of the hydrogels probably literally changed. Theres now a little nationalist topical marker at the site, but you see now its completely overgrown and nobody has tried to go back there and dig again. This lady posing as a young researcher of the shin bone of the hadrosaur, and on the right side you see whats known of the skeleton in sort of dark gray bones, actually, bones that are known. It may have been originally complete skeleton, but farmer who discovered this, even though he ultimately reported to the academy of natural sciences, was giving a lot of the away as trinkets, some were ultimately recovered, but most of them probably disappeared. And this is very unfortunate because this would have been America First reasonably complete dinosaur, but enough was known to really show that this was the First American dinosaur. At that point dinosaurs were only known from three different species. It had been found in the united kingdom. So our knowledge of dinosaurs was very limited. And its actually due to light this work that we got an early of these animals that they were in fact quite different from other extinct and living reptiles in many features. And so was one of the first people who supported the formal recognition of dinosaurs as a Distinct Group of reptiles by the british anatomist richard owen, 1842. A lady had also done a lot of other important work on fossils. He described the first dinosaurs from the American West see on the left, the plate forms. Its from publication. Now this fossils were collected as part of the territorial surveys of the western interior by 13 and then to be a hayden and hayden was also the dolphins gave this fossil material to lady who then described it. And you can see here very early represented by a number of teeth at the top. You actually see teeth that are sort of worn down to these sort of prismatic structures, which are actually teeth of a relative of pterosaurs. And then you see a variety of meat eating dinosaur teeth, which looked like steak knives, blade screws serrated edges, and at the bottom. You also can see some of a dinosaur. So this was not really material. Indeed, today one probably would sort of call collected for some little favor kids at home, but no paleontologist would spend much time with such fragmentary material. But it was done during these territorial surveys. What people basically wondered about and picked up things left and right there was no kind of systematic excavation that would have yielded more complete in time. However, this started to change and even of these later works here on the mammals from the central zoo from the tertiary periods after the extinction of the dinosaurs you got some pretty good specimens for here at the center is the of a sheep sized early cat eating mammal called a brutal sear and what you see is what turned to be actually very common out west at the top you see the jaw of dog like carnivorous mammal which you also described. So we actually describe the many species from the west and this became very important for later paleontological exploration. Now to ms. Marsh did get a childhood with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was born in lockport in york, which, as you can see from this old print, was kind of a rough and tumble place. The time it only became more with the construction of the erie canal and was the son of kenneth marsh, who then reaching from new england from actually from whats peabody, massachusetts. And he was a guy who sort of tried this index drop and ultimately decided move out to the western frontier. But somehow he never made it much past the western frontier of new york state and federal debt to farm with rather modest success. He married a woman, mary peabody, and they had several children. And i think often charles was the only one that actually survived childbirth his wife mary was the sister of one George Peabody who turned eight or so dry. Good business into a fortune real estate and banking and in fact become what became of americas first really prominent rich people in modern a multimillionaire by a great margin. And this turned out to be quite fortunate of neil grew up and went to local schools but he early on had an interest in Natural History and he was not really interested in taking his fathers job as a farmer. And this was a good thing because his mother died early. But his uncle George Peabody took a keen interest him and realized that he was actually quite a bright lad. And so offered him support for education. So my went to phillips academy, andover and then enrolled in sheffield scientific at Yale University from, which he graduated in 1862. Theres a picture of him sitting with some jaunty summer hat posing for the camera as a graduate. Peabody, enormously wealthy, established a major banking empire, and he also involved other people like pierpont morgan. And so who later on really built the basic structure of american finance, which in many ways still persists. The present day peabody was one of those people who was not really into earning money, but he actually wanted to use the money for good purchase. So he supported a great many causes, including his friend o. C. Marsh. So as the civil war broke out in 1861, both cope and decided to go to europe. This was something that was done in prominent families educate oneself to, travel to various countries and admire all primitive civil compared to the United States and to also learn from those european academics. Because at this time, American Science was still in its infancy, and the really big Scientific Institute signs were to be found in britain, france and germany and so both cope and marsh went over to europe. They first met in berlin, 1864 were both marsh and had gone to study with various people that i show you at the bottom. The brothers rose were the founders modern scientific, mineralogy and carl gottfried. The was the first person to systematic study protists single celled organisms, both living and fossil months. And he a very important work microbial algae that became basically the foundation of michael paleontology. Initially, the two really got on like a house on fire. They spent a number of days together talking about scientific interest and so on, and they left on good terms while they sort of continued to travel through europe and will eventually returning to the United States. Thats when koch returned. He was very interested in his in the mountains of new jersey and he, in fact, relocated philadelphia to haddonfield to actually look for more fossils. And he was actually immediately success. He found the bones of a large meat eating dinosaur called the chick, called leigh lapse at londons leigh labs was a mythical dog in greek mythology that could run ever being exhausted. And this was a reference to the very long and slender yet powerful legs of this animals and that this means means it could crawl and you can see this claw. Its almost seven inches in length and. So he realized that this was a really new and interesting thing unlike his headless horse, which was a harmless plant eater. This was clearly a proto animal that probably used its huge crowds as well as its typical blade, like teeth to subdue plant eating dinosaurs like the hadrosaur. Unfortunately, as you can see from we modern reconstruct below it was a very fragmentary again again the quarry workers probably gave bones to other people who came by the markets for a small remuneration so in sort of a nice way of earning site income in a job that was probably very poorly paid. However, what happened was around this time osi marsh showed an interest in these small pits as well and still being good with cope. He asked whether he could come and visit him and, travel through the very small pits, so no reason why you should decline this offer. And so marsh came down and visited very small pits, spent several days, very spitz, and then they parted ways. But when cope got home, he noticed after some time that none of the fossils were coming to him anymore. Not. Not the quarry owners had said anything of the quarry. Workers had come. And so he looked into the matter and he found out that soon after he had visited the pits with marsh. Marsh had gone back and talked to the race pit owners and told them that he would pay them nicely. They sent all of the fossils that they were finding straight up to his in this country. What you may read in a great many books was really the beginning of the conflict between these prominent. Its already quite common the searchers now became famous very early on for a unfortunate reason, namely the infamous mistake of the alaskan source at, the time that he was still studying the markets, new jersey. You also heard about another fossil reptile, a large marine reptile that had been found by an army surgeon in kansas in a limestone that about the same age as some of the mountains and. He was excited to get the specimen. The army surgeon had contacts in philadelphia and so this material ended up the scope rather, with marsh and he very quickly put together a paper you see here a reconstruction of it. And this was a very strange skeleton. It has a super long tail, very short neck. It has a paddle at the front, but apparently no paddle at the back. And this was very odd because you look at the vertebrate, it clearly pointed in the opposite direction. So processes on each point towards the head reptiles. But he put the skull, as it turned out, on the wrong end. This is even more puzzling. It turned out that the very tip of the alleged tail was actually the first letter and it had a fragment of a skull attached to it. But apparently he was in such a rush to discover discovery that he didnt pay too attention to it. He also so he is head and here is the find the pelvic without the hind limb. However based on his own illustrations the pelvic girdle actually had the socket. The hips socket that all animals hind legs have. Theres no point a hip socket if you dont have the hind leg. So heres an early reconstruction and published for a popular paper around the time showing life in new jersey. Its a typical 19th century scene with nature in tooth and it was pretty darwinian. We see a sea turtle here that is famously left standing the middle and being sort of shouted at by the l. S. Mosasaurs, which looks like a sea serpent with sort of seal paddles at the front. Now, for it was corpse that fortune that is old advisor to the flighty, looked at the material and pointed out that the head was indeed on the wrong end. And this of course was a huge embarrassment. Now people always sort also say, like, oh, you pimentos, its really dont know what youre doing. And particularly old base in the journal of comparative material to go on that of happened theres no shame in this reconstructions aside did you hypothesis and if you find anatomical information that contradicts your hypothesis well then you have to rethink the whole matter. But cope was such a proud person that he had a really hard time with this and but he quickly went put the head on the wall on, the right and. And also suddenly quote unquote, discovered that there was a hind panel in the fossils that he had received from kansas. Now, like he had only on this, in the notes of, the academy of natural sciences. And so this was not widely and cope really to get all of the original copies this 1869 paper back into his possession and then published a revised version that particular plate which was actually published in 1870, but he predated it to 1869, hoping that people never notice the error. However, marsh ever copy that he did not part with and there are few other extant copies and very fortunate that i have one of these copies. We have the original version of the skeleton with the head on the wall. It was thought this was and just further evidence that hope was not a very competent paleontologist and he didnt achieve time or. He didnt take it very seriously. Marsh in those days was having a wonderful time because coming back fr