Paul D. Brinkman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226074726
- eISBN:
- 9780226074733
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226074733.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The so-called “Bone Wars” of the 1880s, which pitted Edward Drinker Cope against Othniel Charles Marsh in a frenzy of fossil collection and discovery, may have marked the introduction of dinosaurs to ...
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The so-called “Bone Wars” of the 1880s, which pitted Edward Drinker Cope against Othniel Charles Marsh in a frenzy of fossil collection and discovery, may have marked the introduction of dinosaurs to the American public, but the second Jurassic dinosaur rush, which took place around the turn of the twentieth century, brought the prehistoric beasts back to life. These later expeditions—which involved new competitors hailing from leading natural history museums in New York, Chicago, and Pittsburgh—yielded specimens that would be reconstructed into the colossal skeletons that thrill visitors today in museum halls across the country. Reconsidering the fossil speculation, the museum displays, and the media frenzy that ushered dinosaurs into the American public consciousness, this book takes us back to the birth of dinomania, the modern obsession with all things Jurassic. It shows that these later expeditions were just as foundational—if not more so—to the establishment of paleontology and the budding collections of museums than the more famous Cope and Marsh treks.Less
The so-called “Bone Wars” of the 1880s, which pitted Edward Drinker Cope against Othniel Charles Marsh in a frenzy of fossil collection and discovery, may have marked the introduction of dinosaurs to the American public, but the second Jurassic dinosaur rush, which took place around the turn of the twentieth century, brought the prehistoric beasts back to life. These later expeditions—which involved new competitors hailing from leading natural history museums in New York, Chicago, and Pittsburgh—yielded specimens that would be reconstructed into the colossal skeletons that thrill visitors today in museum halls across the country. Reconsidering the fossil speculation, the museum displays, and the media frenzy that ushered dinosaurs into the American public consciousness, this book takes us back to the birth of dinomania, the modern obsession with all things Jurassic. It shows that these later expeditions were just as foundational—if not more so—to the establishment of paleontology and the budding collections of museums than the more famous Cope and Marsh treks.
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226074726
- eISBN:
- 9780226074733
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226074733.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The first American Jurassic dinosaur rush began in April 1877, when Arthur Lakes and Henry C. Beckwith unearthed gigantic bones from a now-famous hogback ridge near Morrison, Colorado. Lakes sent ...
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The first American Jurassic dinosaur rush began in April 1877, when Arthur Lakes and Henry C. Beckwith unearthed gigantic bones from a now-famous hogback ridge near Morrison, Colorado. Lakes sent samples to two prominent Eastern paleontologists: Othniel Charles Marsh, a Yale professor, and Edward Drinker Cope, a brilliant and combative Quaker from Philadelphia. The two pillars of vertebrate paleontology, Cope and Marsh were already bitter rivals, and the fossil feud between them netted a wealth of new data that revolutionized the study of Jurassic dinosaurs. Before 1877, Jurassic dinosaurs were a very poorly known group, thanks in large part to a dearth of good fossils in Great Britain, Germany, France, and other traditional centers of paleontology. The Jurassic beds of the American West, on the other hand, showed themselves to be far more extensive and more fossiliferous than their European equivalents, and they yielded a superabundance of new dinosaurs, better preserved and often far more complete than anything found previously. Marsh was the clear winner in the race for Jurassic dinosaurs, but his victory made him the object of Cope's envy. Although Cope enjoyed a fair number of successes, his Yale rival took the lion's share of the finest fossils.Less
The first American Jurassic dinosaur rush began in April 1877, when Arthur Lakes and Henry C. Beckwith unearthed gigantic bones from a now-famous hogback ridge near Morrison, Colorado. Lakes sent samples to two prominent Eastern paleontologists: Othniel Charles Marsh, a Yale professor, and Edward Drinker Cope, a brilliant and combative Quaker from Philadelphia. The two pillars of vertebrate paleontology, Cope and Marsh were already bitter rivals, and the fossil feud between them netted a wealth of new data that revolutionized the study of Jurassic dinosaurs. Before 1877, Jurassic dinosaurs were a very poorly known group, thanks in large part to a dearth of good fossils in Great Britain, Germany, France, and other traditional centers of paleontology. The Jurassic beds of the American West, on the other hand, showed themselves to be far more extensive and more fossiliferous than their European equivalents, and they yielded a superabundance of new dinosaurs, better preserved and often far more complete than anything found previously. Marsh was the clear winner in the race for Jurassic dinosaurs, but his victory made him the object of Cope's envy. Although Cope enjoyed a fair number of successes, his Yale rival took the lion's share of the finest fossils.
J. David Archibald
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231164122
- eISBN:
- 9780231537667
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231164122.003.0006
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
This chapter examines how scientific interest in Charles Darwin's evolutionary trees declined and then increased in the twentieth century. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the reality of ...
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This chapter examines how scientific interest in Charles Darwin's evolutionary trees declined and then increased in the twentieth century. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the reality of evolution became firmly established among scientists. Darwin deserves credit for the overused idea of a paradigm shift—evolution was a scientific “fact,” but not so for his theory of natural selection. Intellectual retreat from Darwin's natural selection can be attributed in part to his failure to provide an adequate hypothesis of inheritance or the source of variation on which his natural selection was to act. This chapter explores how the still emerging field of vertebrate paleontology and the ideas of evolutionary mechanisms that accompanied them affected visual representations of evolution in trees. In particular, it looks at the so-called bone wars between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh in the United States, Henry Fairfield Osborn's aristogenetic trees, and the rise of neocreationism. It also considers the contributions of William King Gregory, Alfred Sherwood Romer, and George Gaylord Simpson in visualizing biological order.Less
This chapter examines how scientific interest in Charles Darwin's evolutionary trees declined and then increased in the twentieth century. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the reality of evolution became firmly established among scientists. Darwin deserves credit for the overused idea of a paradigm shift—evolution was a scientific “fact,” but not so for his theory of natural selection. Intellectual retreat from Darwin's natural selection can be attributed in part to his failure to provide an adequate hypothesis of inheritance or the source of variation on which his natural selection was to act. This chapter explores how the still emerging field of vertebrate paleontology and the ideas of evolutionary mechanisms that accompanied them affected visual representations of evolution in trees. In particular, it looks at the so-called bone wars between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh in the United States, Henry Fairfield Osborn's aristogenetic trees, and the rise of neocreationism. It also considers the contributions of William King Gregory, Alfred Sherwood Romer, and George Gaylord Simpson in visualizing biological order.
