Adeptus Ridiculous - THE BONE WARS: Paleontology Ruined Lives | Detective Ridiculous

Episode Date: January 14, 2024

 https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculous https://www.adeptusridiculous.com/ https://twitter.com/AdRidiculous https://orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculous The Bone Wars, also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush, was a period of intense and ruthlessly competitive fossil hunting and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope (of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia) and Othniel Charles Marsh (of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale). Each of the two paleontologists used underhanded methods to try to outdo the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and the destruction of bones. Each scientist also sought to ruin his rival's reputation and cut off his funding, using attacks in scientific publications. Support the show

Welcome everybody to another episode of Detective Ridiculous, where we talk about the only thing more terrifying than Warhammer, real life. Before we get started, tape, if you like this podcast and you want to support us, check out patreon.com slash adeptus ridiculous down in the description and get great benefits like Discord access, posters and bloopers if they happen as well as much, much more. Patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous. And do make sure you check out all of the. wonderful merchandise at Orchidate.com, including hoodies, shirts, game mats, dice, and more. Ooh. I rattle it off well. I feel pretty proud of myself. Yeah, look at you.

I didn't need to come in and save that one at all this time. Not at all. Things are on the up and up for you, man. I'm a big boy. You could almost host a podcast. Oh, my. Imagine, right? Imagine that.

Imagine dragons. Radioactive. Radioactive. Anyway, so are you ready for today? You're listening to Real Heresy FM, or we play in the thing but heresy, heresy and more heresy. No, unidentified signal, man. Come on. What about that?

We are going into kind of new territory, though, because this isn't like, it's not an unsolved case. It's not weird aliens. It's not cryptids. It's not armor-wearing outlaws. Today, we're going to be talking about the bone wars. Wait. The bone? Get your jokes out now.

Go ahead. No, no, no. I'm not thinking, like, boner jokes. I'm thinking, like, like, the never-ending deluge of skeleton memes in October. like prepare for the bone war is sunny you're rattling boys spooky scary skeletons huh I am I am thinking

wow I for sure thought you were going boner jokes I was like all right this is going to take five minutes for Bricky to just get it out of his system and you know but hey nice nice I got a bone to pick with you hey look at you hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey

no we're roaming all the way back to the 1800s for a grudge between two paleontologists that would revolutionize the field, but also maybe do as much damage as it did good. This is just the start to the infinite of the divine. Kind of, kind of, kind of. All right. The two main players in this grudge were Othniel Charles Marsh, who were. We're just going to call Marsh, and Edward Drinker Cope, who we're just going to call Cope.

In that picture, the one on the left is Marsh, the one on the right is Cope. They have classic 1800s facial hair. And in an effort to keep this below two hours and, you know, let shy keep what little sanity she has left, I'm not going to go into every little minutia about their past, but we're going to try and just hit the important bits, and then we'll go from there. Marsh was born to a modest family of farmers in Lockport, New York, on October 29, 1831.

His mother sadly passed away when he was only three years old, and his father kind of just, he wanted him to become a lifetime farmer, kind of like dear old dad, just, you know, work the farms, do all that stuff. But Marsh wasn't really interested in working the farm. He wanted to go into the sciences. He wanted to make his life as like a scientist type guy. He didn't want that farmer life. Luckily for Marsh, his uncle was a very wealthy man named George.

George Peabody that wanted Marsh to pursue his scientific career. So essentially, he takes young Marsh under his wing and he pays for his schooling and he gets him into a nice boarding school and he gets him out of that farmer's life and into the more dignified classrooms. Wait, real quick, is Marsh beard or mustache man? Beard. Beard man. Okay, left on left. Okay. Yeah. He's the sort of angst. looking guy. And Marsh would eventually get his

master's from Yale studying geology, chemistry, and mineralogy, all things you would expect from a paleontologist. And then he would study paleontology abroad in Berlin. There was this kind of hilarious quote about Marsh's

personality that I saw in a YouTube video that went something like to get to know Marsh was like running against a pitchfork. So he was a bit of a stubborn old goat, and if he had a chance to, he was going to prove you wrong or shove your mistake in your face. First chance he got. So he was a know-it-all.

Yes, he was a know-it-all, and he would do whatever it took to achieve his goals, which that's going to come up again later. Okay, so I'm sorry, real quick, I have to ask. So, like running up against a pitchfork as in like impaling yourself, I assume. Yeah, it's very unpleasant to get to know him because he's just, you know, he's like, he's always, he's like, oh, nope, you're wrong, you're wrong, you made a mistake, you're wrong. By the way, here's the right answer, blah, and it's like, okay, buddy. Oh, so he's like, he's like the first year of Adeptus Ridiculous, where it was like purely actuallys, and we had to kind of maneuver around that a little bit.

Yes, yes, that's what he was. Actually. He is the, um, actually guy. Yeah. So, like running against a pitchfork. Well, our, oh, go ahead. No, just goodness gracious.

That's, that's, that's, it's an interesting phrase. But I had to ask, DK, as we left yesterday's episode, you said an extremely boomer phrase. I did? As you called him an old goat,

uh, currently today. You said something about, like chuff or like cut yourself on like on on on chuff like that uh i did i don't remember i don't you're we're i'll i'll i'll listen to it and and i'll let you know but i look my lexicon gets old man because i i care took my my elderly grandparents and their lexicon kind of got stuck in my head a little bit i so i got some real boomer ones that just kind of pop out of no that I don't even know that I'm saying.

Well, I mean, you called this man a true old goat. Yeah, he's a stubborn old goat. Stubbered own goat. Stubbered own goat. If you got any more boomerisms during today, please bring them out. I'll try. They just pop out sometimes. I have no control over it.

Anyway, our other friend in this story, Edward Drinker Cope, was just as brilliant, but at the same time couldn't be more different from Marsh. Cope was born into a wealthy Quaker family on July 28, 1840 in Chester County, Pennsylvania. So he'd all was known more of a lavish lifestyle than most and was sent to expensive boarding schools when he was younger. And according to Wikipedia, shock of all shocks, when he was young, when he was young, he was kind of a spoiled brat and was kind of like constantly manipulating his father to send him more and more money. But it seemed like Cope was really kind of disinterested with like just normal schooling and like his grades were kind of getting worse and worse. And one of the hallmarks of Cope was he had really bad penmanship.

Like he never really worked on getting his penmanship better. So even later in his life, people would be like, wow, your handwriting is garbage. I cannot read what you have written down here. Does he, are we just going to skip past the fact that his name is called cope? I was wondering if you were ever going to get into like, yes, he's Edward Drinker Cope. Okay. He's helping the Cope. I'm hoping shy every time

I mean it's way too much work But every time he's mentioned It's just the picture of the Pepe With the copium Oh with the copium Like not like 10 milliseconds long Like barely even existing Yeah I somehow don't think she's gonna do that

But we can dream You say somehow like it isn't completely obvious That she is not gonna bother Yeah Also there's a picture of his handwriting It's you can read it But as you can tell it's not great No, well, I mean, like

Yeah Well, it's legible You know, one came close Alongside of the vessel The vessel The captain ran and got a harpoon to catch one But it was too late They had all swam away

Yeah I think it's more I think more of it is his method of speaking But this isn't a different time I mean that's not What was That was considered terrible And to the fact that he was known

For how bad it was What was Well, good hate writing back in the day. Like, you remember what old documents with proper cursive look. I mean, they were, that's legible, but by the standard, it probably looked pretty gross. I hope cursive dies in a hole. Agreed to infinity. Anyway, so Cope became really fond of natural science.

And in a bit of a hilarious move, when Cope's school marks were kind of on the down swing his father was like okay so I'm gonna just since you're not that great at school I'm gonna buy you a farm I'm just gonna straight up buy you a farm

you can tend to it grow crops whatever but with the farm work you can make a stable income for yourself because your grades are terrible so this will give you a way to sustain yourself but cope wanting to pursue his interest in natural sciences just decided you know what i'm not going to work at the farm i'm going to rent this farm out and i'm going to use the money from renting it to continue the studies i want to continue uh he would also frequent the academy of natural sciences and kind of just

he would just kind of like haunt the halls and kind of just learn himself he would teach himself he would absorb himself around people that were working natural sciences and stuff like that. And at the time, this is known as being like a gentleman naturalist, where you're basically self-taught. Because at the time, there aren't too many PhD programs being given in natural science, let alone paleontology. You were put to work. Yeah, you were put to work. work unless you came from a rich family that just buys you a farm and you're just like, oh, whatever, I'll rent the farm out and I'll just be a landlord for now.

I heard from a documentary that as early as nine years old, he was hanging around the halls of of this academy and he was like drawing these really intricate dinosaur skeleton sketches. And probably from years of skillfully manipulating his father, his father finally agreed, to allow cope to attend the University of Pennsylvania where he would be able to study under a man named Joseph Lyddy who at the time was probably the most famous paleontologists because he had found the first basically complete dinosaur skeleton that is called the Hadrosaur in Haddon Field, New Jersey.

So the not as in the skeleton was there or as in he was the first person in this town in New Jersey to find the skeleton? I think, I think, I don't know if he was the, I think he was the first person to find this specific dinosaur skeleton. And I think it was one of the first complete dinos. Because before, like they had found like fossils and everything, but I think he found like the first almost complete one. So he was a big deal. Okay, so, okay, because it's like, he found the first ever skeleton, dinosaur skeleton in this city in New Jersey.

I'm like, congratulations? Like, like, that's cool, I guess, but, okay, gotcha. So, so he's, he's kind of a big deal. He's a big deal. Yeah. So that's sort of the extreme TLDR on both men. And they would first meet in 1864 when Cope would head out to traverse a, across Europe to further his studies in paleontology.

I mean, that's why he wanted to go, but also, Cope had literally no interest whatsoever in being drafted into the civil war that was happening at the time. He was born into a Quaker, he was also a pacifist. So not only did he not want to fight for the South, or against the South, he was also a pacifist. So he didn't want to go to war, period. So he kind of, he wants to get out of Dodge, but he also wants to continue with studies.

And I think specifically his wealthy father funded the whole trip because he was also like, yeah, you know what, I'd rather my son wasn't in America right now too. Eventually, he would find himself in Germany where Marsh was studying as a graduate student in paleontology. And since Cope was really trying to absorb himself in it, he would of course wind up. meeting with Marsh. And they would actually really hit it off. Despite being polar opposites, they really hit it up. And I don't know if it's just because they were both from America, they had common interest in paleontology, but they really, really liked each other. Like, their friendship was so deep that when the two of them returned from America,

they would literally name fossil discoveries after each other. Uh, would name an amphibian fossil, oh boy, I'm going to butcher this, Petonius Marci, and Marsh would name this large serpent-like fossil, Mosasaurus Copanus. Mosasaurus Copanus. I hardly knew her. Stop it. Ooh, owie, my bones. Oh, owie, my bones. Take the bone juice. A bone-hurning juice is unironically one of my favorite memes.

That being said, speaking of bones, continue. So like they were actually pretty fond of each other. I think it was around 1866 that George Peabody, who is Marsh's rich uncle, decided he was going to fund the building of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, probably with a little convincing from Marsh because, you know, now that we have this natural history museum at Yale, you know, it needs

a paleontology curator of some sort. Who could possibly be perfect to run this Peabody Museum of Natural... If only there was... If only the person who funded the museum and if only the person who the museum was named after had some relative

that was just wildly knowledgeable in this field and was already now a professor at Yale. Who could... Oh, Marsh! Well, he would be perfect for such a thing. You can cut your sarcasm with a knife. Which I think I saw a source say that the museum actually cost Peabody

in the ballpark of like 100,000 to 100,000, to $150,000 in 1866, which, if I looked it up right, that's about two million buckaroos by today's standards. That is quite the building. Yes, that is, that is, that is a building. That's got, that's got a little bit of that, that, that warhammer in it. Got a little of that Victorian got into it, doesn't it? It does have a little bit of that warhammer in it, doesn't it? Warhammer fans when they see Gothic architecture.

It's just like in my Warhammers. Cope, however, was kind of floating around a little bit. He married. He had a daughter. He'd been a zoology professor for a little bit at a place called Haverford College. But he didn't really like that much. It kind of seemed like he just got bored of it. Like he thought it was a fine enough job.

But in spending all his time teaching students, he couldn't really go on digs and do all the stuff that he really wanted to do. So he would quit that job, pick up, and move out to Haddon Field, New Jersey. Which, naturally, because he wanted to go check out and dig around in that fossil quarry where Joseph Lyddy had found the Hadrosaur, since there were still a lot of untapped fossils that were still there to be found. So he was like, oh, that's perfect. I'm going to go there. I'm going to hang out with Joseph Leady, work with him.

We're going to find some dinosaurs. It's going to be amazing. And at this point, Cop was like, you know what? You know who else would love to check this out and see what I'm up to? My good buddy, Marsh. Let me invite him out here and show him the area that I'm looking at for fossils, this area that I'm really going to engross myself in. And we share this passion, so he's going to love it.

So Marsh comes out and they kind of tour around this Haddonfield fossil bed and everything is going great and they're still just the best of friends. Problem is, Marsh is maybe a little too impressed with the fossil bed and everything he sees there. Because he goes behind Cope's back to either like the owner of the quarry or like a bunch of the workers, maybe both. I've seen both mentioned. And he bribes them to send him any interesting fossil finds instead of Cope. Okay, so Marsh fires the first shot in this battle of the bones. Oh, yes. In this bone war, Marsh definitely fires the first shot.

All right. And when Cope finds out, he's naturally pissed. Like, man, come on. I showed you where I was. working with Lighty and how cool everything was and you go behind my back like that but marsh was of the mindset that like yo all's fair and love and war dude I saw something that I wanted and I was willing to do whatever it takes to get it yeah you're my friend but too bad so sad loser so this is naturally a pretty big blow to their friendship but apparently it wasn't like

a killing blow I guess they're still on like neutral terms and they like like tolerate each other. And one thing to know about Cope at the time was that he is a publishing fiend. Like, he is pushing out tons of published papers at an

astounding rate. And so at one point... Cope is just a giant writer. He just really does it. Like, I'm actually pretty shocked to that. Like, he finds out he bribed them? Yeah, he finds out, either from like Lighty or maybe he

heard from one of the workers or something, but he finds out, he's not happy. God damn, okay. I just, I'm surprised they're even on talking terms, you know? Yeah. Like, you find out someone bribes someone else behind your back. I know, like, for me, that would have been the killing blow. I'm not associating with you ever again, but I guess the 1800s are just a very different forgiving time.

I mean, maybe he, wasn't, wasn't, wasn't. Isn't Marsh like the big deal though and Cope was like excited to work under him though? Lighty was the big deal. Marsh and Cope are kind of on the same level at the moment. You're right. So I guess maybe

infighting would look bad underneath Lighty or something and they didn't want to rule them with the thing they got. Yeah. But at one point Cope is like hey everyone, look at this really awesome fossil collection I put together.

And it's this dinosaur called the Elasmosaurus. And he's already published a bunch of papers about the Elasmosaurus and all of his recreations of it. And if you look at a picture of the version Cope showed, it looks like

this dinosaur has this really long tail, which is a reasonable thing to think of like a reptilian dinosaur. You know? Like on that picture right there. Or maybe like a fiche. Yeah.

Like, Shai just posted it. It's like, oh, yeah, that, sure. But apparently, Marsh was like, I don't know if you knew this, but you put that dinosaur's head on its ass. That thing actually just has a super long neck. Okay. And Marsh was kind of famously quoted as saying,

when I informed Professor Kopevitt, his wounded vanity received such a shock from which it has never recovered and has since been my bitter enemy. Now, I've heard a couple different tellings of this story. Like Marsh claims he was very nonchalant about it, and then Kope freaked out because he had already published this mistake. It was already out in the wild. Then there are some sources that say Marsh only saw a couple of vertebrae were in the wrong spot. And it was actually Joseph Leedy that was like, uh-oh, Marsh is on to something. Not only did you miss the vertebrae, that thing's head is on its ass, dude. And in his embarrassment, Cope tried to literally buy every single copy of the paper he published

in the American philosophical journal to try and like, you know, cover it up. He was like, no one's gonna know if no one can know. Yep. Bys every paper. Yep, yep. He buys every paper he can. That is a level of like, not really petty,

but of just like pure fear that I can appreciate. Like, I can get behind that. Yeah, I think everyone's been in a situation like that where it's like, oh no, can I just like buy all of them so no one can ever see this mistake ever? Can I remove the brain of everyone who saw me post that thing on Facebook? Right? So this was basically the straw that broke the camel's back as far as their friendship went. I mean, like we said, for me, it probably would have ended after the whole bribing thing, but, you know, it is what it is.

And now... So real quick, the straw that broke... its back was because he called him out for his incorrect like dinosaur yep i mean i guess it was the that was the the final blow because he was like you know i already know that you bribed people to like work against me and now you're doing this and i'm super embarrassed and you know oh oh that he publicly said that publicly okay okay i was like because on one hand

And if they're working in a sense together, then they're just trying to, you know, he's just like helping out his paper. But yes, he publicly was like, my colleague is a moron. He smells bad. All right. Yeah. So it's kind of the straw that breaks the camel's back. But also, now Lighty is kind of stuck in the middle of this rivalry because Cope is kind of his protegey. He's kind of his bud, but Marsh is also right that he kind of screwed that

Elasmosaurus up a little bit, which, I mean, to be fair, and I've heard a couple podcasts say this as well. It's like, this was like early time paleontology, so it's not an uncommon mistake to make, especially when you look at that weird looking Elasmasaurus. So that thing does look absolutely moronic. It really does. I would assume that's a long. ass tail too. Yeah, that just, like, the first image is so much more understandable. The idea that

it just had this giraffe neck is, yeah, it's crazy. Anyway, so we're in the 1870s at this point, and there's a word that fossils are now being found out west. And with the transcontinental railroad being completed, I think in like 1870s. This was the perfect opportunity for marsh and cope to strike out towards new lands and discover a veritable gold mine of new fossils. But the problem was that during this time, heading out west was rather dangerous, not to mention, obscenely expensive, dangerous because the Native Americans were none too happy with all. the expansion into their homelands. So oftentimes you'd have to employ soldiers

to protect you, or like, at the very least, you'd have to offer these Native American tribes some sort of payment for what you were looking for in their land. Marsh would famously go prospecting out west with

the help of his Yale students since he was a professor there and now the curator of a nice museum and get them to pay their own way. usually took about some 16 students. In one of the documentaries I once watched, they made note of the fact that if you look at pictures of Marsh's student entourage,

they all kind of look like grizzled Wild West figures. They've got cowboy hats, guns, spurs, cowboy boots, and they look like just wow, wow, west, right? This looks like Teddy Roosevelt's crew, basically. Right? They look like they're outlaws. But really, they're just like the upper crust aristocracy families just playing dress-up. Most of those people don't even like know how to shoot their guns properly.

They're just, they're basically cosplay as outlaws at this point. I must, I must say, okay, like, do you watch Always Sunny in Philadelphia? I do not. Okay, the guy, I don't know if Shai does, the guy on the bottom left looks like Charlie Day. Oh my God, he does look like Charlie Day actually. I know who Charlie Day is. He does. I could see this being like the only Sunday in Philadelphia, it's a cover for like a season as a spoof meme. I sure. Just a just a thought process because he looks a lot like him.

He does. He really does, actually. I know Charlie Day from Pacific Rim, which is a stupid thing to say, but... That is a very stupid thing to say, even if I do like... Is it a Cidicrim? I do, too. It's a guilty pleasure movie. Anyway, Cope, however, didn't really obviously have the support of Yale.

He was still in that sort of gentleman naturalist, who was doing his own thing, kind of just funding and finding all of his stuff on his own dime. I believe he actually, to help finance all of his trips and stuff,

He did end up selling that farm we talked about, and he also picked up a huge inheritance when his father died in 1875. Cope also had the aid of the United States Geological Survey under a man named Ferdinand Hayden. So Cope would kind of tag along on these survey trips out west to help ease the blow on his own finances. And I think he would also just kind of like, he would kind of like, he would kind of like, like find these government funded trips out west and he would kind of just, hey, I'll tag along with you guys, I'll help you out

while also digging for bones and doing his whole paleontology shtick. Okay, all right. And when Marsh caught wind the fact that Cope had found a way out west and he was now also digging for

fossils out west, boy, he was not happy. He was so upset. set by his rival coming out west that he would actually hire men to spy on cope. They'd give him the code named Jones for some reason. But he'd spy on cope, keep a close eye on his rival, see what he's up to, report to me on what he's finding and what he's doing. And then cope would do the same thing.

He'd hire a bunch of men working for Marsh to keep tabs on him, what he'd found, what he's doing. They'd bribe workers from each other's dig site. try to get the upper hand, try to screw each other over. They're basically doing every underhanded thing you could think of. Like a little later on, we'll talk about this more. It gets so bad that Marsh, and I'm pretty sure Cope does this as well, I'm not sure, that if men for whatever reason couldn't get a fossil out of the ground,

or it was just a little too damaged, they'd blow it up. They'd destroy it. Don't leave anything behind that my rival can get their hands on. And to make... So they don't follow the number one rule of this, which is don't use explosives near something that is extremely valuable and fragile. Yeah, pretty much. You know what? Like, have a good time, Cope. Enjoy the bone splinters.

Yeah, enjoy the bone, if there's even any bone fragments left. Like, they really wanted to screw each other over. and to make matters even worse in these bone wars, Joseph Lydie is also in Wyoming making landmark fossil discoveries too. And this is where a huge problem for paleontology would occur. So Lydie would be like the first to find a new species of fossils, and he would classify it and he'd give it a name.

But then Marsh would find a different, fossil from the same specimen, and in an effort to, like, outdo and beat cope to, like, the punch, he would publish, like, this really poorly and hastily written paper, giving that a different name. And then cope would do the same thing. He wouldn't look at anybody else's research, but he would find the same specimen, and in an effort to outdo Marsh, he would give it another name. And so now this one new species that Lydie initially found has like a million

different names because Cope, Marsh, and Lydie are all giving it different names for the same damn thing. And this would actually come to be known as taxonomic carpet bombing. Because it's just because it's just

they are just carpet bombing this thing with names. I find this even more hilarious because I'm pretty positive that this phrase was invented later on, because I don't think they had carpet bombing at the time. Yeah, I think. They didn't have, like, planes yet. Yeah, it was definitely, it wasn't, they didn't, I don't think they called it that at the time. I heard it in a documentary from a guy named Bob Baker, but then I also looked it up, and it was like,

I don't know if it was a dictionary term, but a bunch of different places marked it as, this is an example of taxonomic carpet bombing. And I'm like, wow, that's, yes, it is. Yes, it is. You know, I respect this level of pettiness. They're so petty. I respect this. But honestly, like, despite Cope including himself in all of this stuff, I really do think that

Marsh is so far the one I blame the most out of all of this. Oh, 100%. Me too. So far, this is basically Marsh's fault. So, yeah, like, he seems like he started this. And even if Cope is playing the game, uh, Yeah, Marsh Marsh fired the

The opening volley. Yeah, definitely. The first carpet bomb, one might say. He was he dropped the first carpet bomb, yes. Now all I can think of is like this big bomb with like carpet patterning on it. It's like, anyway. Are there a 70s carpet that's like, that's like green, like bright green bath bathroom carpet? Seventy's bathroom yellow carpet.

Yep. Yeah, Stegosaurus. was named by Marsh. Cope then found it too, named it Hyseophorus, and then Marsh found it again, thinking it was a different dinosaur, named it Deracodon, Dercodon, Dercodon, whatever. It appears that we've gone with Marsh's name at this point, though. Yeah. And again, while the two would find a prolific amount of fossils and really advanced the field of paleontology, we have no idea how many bones were also lost or destroyed because of their rivalry or how many are never going to be found, but it also took decades.

It took the field of paleontology decades to actually undo and properly categorize the mess they made with their taxonomic carpet bombing. And, you know, throwing out the the countless names and classifications for the same species. And it was such a huge mess. It was just, look at those two pictures of, like, all of the classifications before and then all of them after. So the entire scientific field of paleontology has been muddled due to the rivalry of two assholes. Yes, it's been completely. Muddled by these two

I'm assuming now we're chill Now we figured out what's what and what's Oh yes In 2024 it has all been sorted out yes Okay how how long did this last for Oh how long did the Bone Wars last for or just how long did it take to Yeah like how long did they go back and forth and do this to each other Oh

Until their deathbed Oh my God like until their death we'll talk about that too okay okay it lasted their whole lives I thought they would maybe like ends their rivalry after like 20 years and retire no but oh god okay no it was also because of all this petty infighting that Lydie was like you know what go for it you two are spending

way too much money I can't keep up with that you're also cutthroat about it and that's that's it for me this is not the life this is not paleontot you guys are insane I am just out so lighty just straight up dips and he just leaves paleontology and of course all the while Marsh and Cope are just sniping each other in in all of their publications which again Cope is pushing out stupid a stupid amount of papers which was another huge difference between the two like co-pushes out papers all the time that are kind of hastily written with like a bunch of mistakes. And Marsh is a little more on the methodical side.

He tries, tries to do his due diligence and make sure that if he publishes a paper, it's got some research behind it. So ironically, the more ethical journalism is from the guy who's the bigger douchebag. Yes. Yes, actually. Oh, this doesn't end. The other fallout was that, you know, Marsh started to actually publish a lot of these naming mistakes that Cope made, showing that a lot of the new finds that Cope made were, oh, hey, these are already named and these are already classified, you know? Or he would intercept telegrams that Cope was sending out, and he would beat Cope to the punch, basically nullifying a good chunk of Cope's work. and Cope would go so far as to literally buy a publication called The American Naturalist

so he could publish with priority as quick as he wanted, as much as he wanted, as fast as he wanted. I respect these two individuals immensely. This is a level of hater that is just so palpable. Yeah, Marsh was trying his. best to just completely nullify all of the work cope was doing. And Cope was like, fine, I'll buy my own publication, and you can't do anything about it. So, I guess, aside, and aside, real quick, how, like, despite their immense pettiness and shenanigans, Did they actually genuinely, through this level of pettiness, discover a large amount of dinosaurs?

Oh, yeah. They, so I think the final tally was something like, so technically speaking, Marsh wins the Bone Wars because he discovered, I think, I want to say 80 to 86 new dinosaur species. and I think Cope got 50-ish. Like actually new dinosaurs. Yeah, actually new. Yeah, Cope discovered 56 new dinosaur species. Mars discovered 80. So they discovered, and before the two of them started out, there were like nine.

Oh, okay. So, so, oh, man, what, okay, maybe we need to have more spite motivation in the world. I know, right? But, like, when they started, there was like eight, nine, maybe ten dinosaurs. They finished, and it's like 56 and 80. All right. Maybe. So these people, uh, by like, by like, uh, they basically 20xed by an exponential amount

have increased the, the knowledge. And so, so this genuinely made a massive headway. the field of paleontology. Oh, yeah. And like Shai said, one of Marsh's theories was connecting dinosaurs to birds as being like descendants, which was a far out thing to say back then. But I mean, that's, well, I don't, did that get confirmed just because that was like a, I shouldn't say that was a thing in Jurassic Park because that is a fictionalization of paleontology. But I mean, the idea has been around for a while. I didn't realize it only just.

got like confirmed. Anyway, it should also be noted that at this time, Marsh wasn't really going into the fields himself anymore. He was basically hiring teams of bone hunters to go out west for him, do all the digging, all the hard work, and then send the bones back to him for like classification and all that stuff. So now we're rolling into like 1877 and the first transcontinental railroad is expanding further and further west.

And Marsh would receive a letter from a man named Arthur Lakes. He's like a freelance artist, geologist, a teacher, and he's in Golden, Colorado. And in this letter, he mentions that while he was out hiking, he saw these massive bones, stuff he'd never seen before, just like embedded and jutting out of like a lake bed. and he was like, bro, I think these are like vertebrae and the humorous bones of some massive dinosaur. And I don't know if Marsh was just really busy, didn't realize what the letter was about,

but he was actually really, really slow to respond. So Arthur's like, well, you know, let me send a letter to cope. You know, and I'll send him some of the fossil samples too. and by the time Marsh had responded and sent his men out to the area Arthur Lakes had described Cope had already set up a quarry and was digging up bones there

and Marsh even tried to be like hey guys I know you work with Cope but can I offer you more money and they were like no you can't Cope is paying us really well and we no no we're good we're good sorry Cope is paying us really well specifically to tell you to piss off.

To piss off, right? Yeah. But even though he was slow to act on that, all would not be lost for Marsh, and he would actually end up hitting it really big because he would be alerted to an area in Wyoming called the Como

bluffs that were just rich in fossils. And he would be alerted by two men that had been working for the Union Pacific Railroad. They went by the, I guess they went by the alias Harlow and Edwards. This time, Marsh wasn't going to sit on his hands and wait for Cope to come and steal another potential dig site from him. And he was like, all right, you know what?

Let's make a deal here, you and me. Let's negotiate, all right? Let me make a deal with you and let me, you know, let's get some work done here in Como Bluff. And I think, I guess it was on Wikipedia that I saw that they were like, you know, he kind of bullied us into a deal. Like he was working so fast and he was throwing, he kind of bullied us into the deal. And it was from this Como Bluff area that Marsh would find like almost completed fossils of Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, Aptosaurus, and I think the Bronosaurus too, although, I'm trying to remember. Shire,

Alasaurus and Brannosaurus in the same family, same thing, or something like that. I think they're just, like, really close. Anyway, and Comal Bluff is actually where a lot of, like, the fossil destruction happened. Because, again, Como Bluff is a freaking gold mine for Marsh. This is, like, his baby. So, like I said before, you know, he'd be like, look, Look, guys, if you can't get the bones out for whatever reason, blow it up. Destroy it.

Cope ain't getting nothing from the Como bluffs. And like I said, I think Cope would try to do a similar thing, but at this point, cope is on the outside looking in, while Marsh is getting all the glory from the Como bluffs. Like I said, this is basically Marsha's golden freaking goose. and by around the 18 oh I think I meant one of them are the same

it's like aptosaurus and I don't know anyway by around the allosaurus looks kind of like a D-Rex just kind of Yeah yeah I think I got it mixed up It was either the aptis The aptosaurus looks a lot like

Bronosaurus or something There was some conflict between like The Bronosaurus and one of them I forget which one Oh there's a conflict is there. I know, right? Shocked. Shock of all shocks. But yeah, by around the 1880s,

Co. Barely has any of these quarries and dig sites running, and he had more fossils in his personal collection than he knew what to do with. Like, I read in a couple places that his personal collection could literally fill a house.

He had exhausted almost all of his wealth trying to keep up with an outdo marsh, but even Cope knew that, like, at this point, like, man, I'm out of the game. Like, I don't have the funds to do this anymore. And he had to look elsewhere outside of fossil digs to help keep himself afloat. So he tried getting into the silver mining business, which for a time proved profitable, but unfortunately a lot of his mines just kind of dried up. and he was left back at square one with like no money. Meanwhile, Marsh would actually be given a very comfortable position

as chief paleontologist of the U.S. Geological Survey. And from what I can tell from the sources I saw, he didn't necessarily earn this position, but more used like all of his connections and a wee bit of politicking to have the position granted to him. And Marsh would show that, you know, I haven't forgotten about you, cope, because he would use his new position to continue sticking it to his rival by basically making sure that he was almost blackballed from, like,

teaching jobs or government jobs, that he was more than qualified for. He would also take this opportunity to suggest that, you know what, I think a lot of Cope's collections, like his personal collection of fossils, were collected using government funds, and they should be reclaimed because they are government property. Unfortunately for Marsh, Cope was known to, he was a stickler for keeping receipts, for keeping proper documentation. and he was able to prove that his collection had not been collected via government funding, and he had used his own previously vast fortune to get this personal collection of bones. Cope also kept a log of basically every little mistake that Marsh had made over the years, from the bribery to underhanded dealings, published mistakes, and everything in between.

He has the book of grudges. He does. He has the book of grudges, and he kept this little book of grudges tucked in the bottom drawer of his desk. And Cope would use this and the testimony of any disgruntled workers of Marsh he could find and start printing

his rival's misdeeds in the New York Herald with the headline, scientists wage bitter warfare like I think he gave his little grudge book to a reporter and that's the headline they printed with it and so their rivalry

was now front page news and the two would continue to post claims about what the other did or how they plagiarized work or how they were mismanaging government funds and how they were destroying fossils and

and they were stealing and there were spies and there were explosives. And their rivalry wasn't really anything new to the scientific community. To the paleontology community, it was hard to not see it. But the fact that it was on the front pages now, this was really not good for paleontology, just in general, because this was becoming the mainstream perception. of American paleontology. These squabbling children that were accusing each other

of every little misdeed under the sun, but also like, oh my God, they're spying on each other. They're hiring spies. They're using explosives. They're blowing up bones. What is going on? Is that what paleontology is?

Is blowing up bones paleontology? Is this pale? Like this is. Folks, is it good science to blow up evidence? Right? And so paleontology started having a very negative perception to it. And it got to the point where all of this had become so awful and so negative that Marsh was demanded to resign from his position in the U.S. Geological Survey, and he would never financially recover from it. Cope would end up finally having to sell off his collection of fossils because he became very ill,

and he needed the money to survive, he needed the money for hospital bills, he just, you know. And in one final challenge on his deathbed in 1897, he asked that his skull and brain be removed from his body and measured. He then challenged Marsh to do the same when he died to see which of them had the bigger brain. Oh my God, okay, I've gone from hating these people to loving them. Marsh would not accept the challenge and would pass away in 1890 at the age of 67, though. Ironically, a vast amount of Marsh's personal fossil collection was actually, have found to have been acquired with government funding and it was reclaimed while any of the rest of it in Marsh donated to the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Oh, so he cheated.

He did. He accused Cope of the stuff that he was doing. Oh, uh, and, and, and, he, he, and, he wouldn't even, he wouldn't even, measure its own brain. He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. Yeah, he passed this law that like, oh, hey, you know, if it was collected with government funding, government should have it. And then in the end, it's like, oh, hey, by the way, that's the law you passed. You did this thing. Why would you pass this law? All right. Despite the fact that they're both petty assholes, I think the bigger villain here is Marsh. Oh, 100% the bigger villain is Marsh. Without a shadow of a doubt the bigger villain is Marsh.

But the thing is, like, one of the craziest things is like, so they were that prolific while being that petty, right? Right. Imagine how much it would have done for paleontology and just dinosaur fossils in general if they had found a way to cooperate. I mean, they found a staggering amount of stuff and then blew up more. Yeah, who knows? what they blew up. Who knows

what we'll never find? Because like, among their discoveries, there's triceratops, allosaurus, stegosaurus, um, pronosaurus. There's so many like iconic dinosaurs that they found. Who knows what they blew up

or, or sometimes they would refill in dig sites? It's, yeah. I, I, I wonder how much they would have advanced if they could have just not been so petty and just, found some way to work together. I absolutely

loved this story. If I've been kind of quiet this whole time because I was actually kind of enthralled by this volume of like, like it's, it's just hilarious to me, the combination of the fact that they were this awful to each other, but

in being this terrible, like, you know, you think about, like, Google and Apple and stuff like that, you know, and you think about all of their, all of like how much competition pushes each other, you know? That's true. Like, I mean, obviously giant corporations greed and that kind of stuff also happens, but this is like a really small scale version of just,

I'm a better scientist than you, and I'm going to prove it. And if anything I can't solve, I'm going to blow up. It's just, it's such like mismanagement combined with hilarity that I can't not enjoy it. Yeah. And also now there's a part of me that's like, you know, would, would they have been as prolific if they work together? Because like when you have that competition, oh man, you're really pushing yourself. Like you're like, oh, I got to outdo cope. I got outdo marsh. And so they're really going hard where if they work together, maybe they become a

little more lax. Maybe it takes a lot longer. So maybe the competition is kind of one of the reasons that they were able to be so prolific. I absolutely believe that's the case. Like, okay, so like on a side, I'll total tangent real quick. I watched, I watched a skill up video recently. Oh, no. Hey, Jesus. We love skillet.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think, I think Shy had him on for a thing at some point, right? Oh, yeah, he used to show up on her art streams all the time. He's great. I met him in person once. He's wonderful person. Yeah, I was supposed to meet him in person. but then I got trapped out of Canada again. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.

But he made this little video talking about like the best stuff of 2023. And there was a part where he talks about the meta quest, like VR goggles. And there's some kind of crazy stuff involving it, like the mixed reality thing where you put it on and you like do the dishes. And there's like a browser tab open on the corner of your eyes. So you're watching like YouTube and stuff while doing it. in the dishes and it totally works. Yeah. I was thinking about that and then I was thinking about the new Apple VR thing that all that we

kind of think is goofy but is probably going to be kind of a crazy major thing. Yeah. I'm just thinking like how far does the game industry and stuff like this go with, um, from one to the other to the other technological advancement, uh, like valves steam deck and how, how much that's revolutionized handheld gaming. Yeah. Like that much competition. And to think that the dinosaurs we know of nowadays are the result of two old grumpy assholes outdoing themselves.

It's just so peak to me. It's just so peak. It really is. I'm considering getting one of those MetaQuest headsets because I would love to, I don't know how detailed it is, but the idea of painting my miniatures with like a, and podcast tab open. It's kind of cool. I mean, you know, you could, you could just, you can do that still.

Like, don't you paint at your, couldn't you just paint at your computer desk? No, because then I get paint all over my desk. We just put a tarp down. There's a lot of stuff on this desk, man. Well, get a laptop. I mean to remove all of my stuff. Point being.

I'm not, I'm not gonna get a meta quest because it's very expensive, but. Yeah, fair enough. I got a rod. And I love it. Like, it is like, I love that damn thing. I got the Steam Deck OLED because of his video on it. Oh, really?

Yeah, it is incredible. Absolutely incredible. I love my rock. I, man, I, I didn't think I was gonna because I was like, oh, you're, if you want to play your theme game, just go to your computer. I'm like, now I don't like have to. And like, also like, like, I'm just like, hey, I don't have to be like doom scrolling, like social media anymore.

I can just be like chilling anywhere else and not, oh man, yeah. It's great. I love it. I love it. Anyway, we've gotten a little off topic and, you know, that's the Bone Wars. This is great. I like the Bone Wars. Me too.

Bone Wars was fun. This is so dumb and stupid and hilarious all at once. I am a fan. Shai, do you have anything to add? Anything I forgot? Anything you want to leave us with? because I know Shai was also a big fan of this topic. She was like, I really like this topic to you.

And I enjoyed researching it and seeing just the low levels that they would sink to to outdo each other. And paint the other one as an absolute buffoon in publications and stuff. So, yeah, I had a good time. Oh, Shai is typing. Per Chirabo would be proud. Let's go. Let's go. Take me home, Country Road.

people who like Magnus versus people who like Perchirabo Open image in tab Copy paste Are we keeping all this Wow

End it Yep Should I end it No no please I need to post this Because it works for the situation I don't know that it does It works for the situation I found it

Okay You can't post this in the video though I will get to monetize. All right, bye, everybody.