The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 132 - The Bone Wars

Episode Date: November 18, 2015

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine The Bone Wars. SOURCES TOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCH

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read a story to my friend. Gareth Reynolds has no idea what the topic is gonna be about. Heyo! Slow down. Huh? Just slow down. Time his money, baby. Pull a feeling into it. Uh, Gareth Reynolds, who has no idea what the topic is gonna be about. God, do you want to look who to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Dave, okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not gonna become a tickly podcast. Okay. You are queen-fakey of eight uptown. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville! A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle and do what? Fray! Oh, hi, Gary. No, I see you've done, my friend.

No! No! October 29th, 1831. You don't need to shout at me. Othniel. Excuse me? It looks like O-T-H-N-I-E-L. Othniel? Both no? Othniel. This is the weirdest word we've had this early in the dollar. I don't know. It's a name. It's a first name. Is it somebody trying to say oatmeal with a lisp? Well, man, I can tell you right now this guy, this guy changes his name to O-C because he hates people trying to pronounce his name. Okay, so can we hear you? What did it, what we think it is? I'm gonna go with Othniel. Othniel. Othniel. Othniel. I mean, it looks

like Neil. Othniel. Othniel. Othniel. Othniel. Othniel. Othniel. Othniel. Othniel. I should say that this is the number one requested dollop. Oh, shit. People love Othniel. And thanks to Gareth Dose for helping write it up. Did all the work. Heavy work. See? Gareth. Othniel. Marsh was born in Lockport, New York. The son of a struggling farmer, Marsh's mother died when he was three years old. And his father just wanted him to become a field hand on the family farm. Okay. So he's got high and low expectations. Aim low, son. You know what? You're be good at cleaning buckets of shit from the pig slop. Father, I see myself doing so much

more. I don't pig slop picker-upper. I mean, you'll do what I did and that's pick up pig slop. You're not even drunk. I know. I have a brain disease. Father. But Marsh was into science from a young age and he was lucky to also be the nephew of a wealthy banker. I'll see. Get in on it. Due to his this connection, Marsh went to Phillips Academy and then Yale and became one of the university-trained paleontologists in America, one of the few. Okay. In the late 1860s. Okay. He then went and studied as a graduate student at three of Germany's greatest universities during the Civil War. Okay. Also, that sounds like someone is

avoiding the draft. Yeah. Edward Drinker Cope. Edward Drinker Cope? What? Edward Drinker Cope? Drinker Cope. Are those two names at the end? Well, I mean, Drinker's his middle name. Drinker is his middle name. After your uncle Drinker. Not after your uncle Sloppy. After your uncle Drinker. No, not the Lush. Not Johnny Lush Cope. You're just gonna be the Drinker. Drinker. Yeah, I don't know. All right. Edward Drinker Cope. It's the 1840s. Who knows? Sure. Yeah. And then there's Benny eating sandwiches. Edward Drinker Cope was born in 1840 into a rich Philadelphia Quaker family. And he also loved science as a kid. Okay. He took

classes at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. He grew up among naturalists and scientists and was schooled in the Enlightenment style of gentile amateurism. Pornography. That is correct. But okay, so so so far these are people who are avoiding religion and going with science. Well, gentile amateurism was the idea that educated men wrote or practiced science for their own pleasure and for the entertainment of other of others, not because he needed to make a living. Right. So they're like, they're well off. And this is a hobby. You don't do science for a living, sir. You do it just like a, hello, this is what

I have at the party. Yeah, for passion. It's kind of like what what you do. Like if you're like, you know, like if you're Rod Stewart's kid, right, you're like, ah, he's a director, but he's just like directing dumb shit that he's put his own money. And so this is every Hollywood kid. Right. Okay. Cope drew sketches of dinosaurs when he was nine years old and developing another passion for biology at a young age. He yearned to just like me that we all did. Didn't we? Yeah. How does that work? I don't know. You're not asking my God. I'm pointing at the frog. Oh, thank God asking you how it works. Did you put a nickel in it? No, I'm

pointing at this. I'm not putting anything. He yearned to understand the natural world, but didn't have a PhD because American colleges didn't give them out. Also, American gentelism, amateurism, gentila, gentila, amateurism. I got that completely wrong. So he went to Europe's great universities on his family's dime being sent there to avoid the Civil War draft, just like Marsh. Cool. While there, Cope and Marsh met briefly in Berlin in 1863, when they were both study. Marsh was 32 and had two university degrees. Cope was a bit different. No degrees. Cope was an amateur gentleman scientist while Marsh was

a methodical academic. Marsh was a bald and bearded Darwinist. Cope was a handsome, with a shock of blonde hair, gentleman and didn't believe in natural selection. Okay. Interesting. They seemed to have liked each other upon first meeting. Marsh took Cope on a tour of Berlin and they hung out for days. Cope left. They continued to write each other and exchange writings and fossils and photographs. Okay. So they were kind of cool pen pals. That was a good dollop, right? Well, something tells me these two are going to end up a little more like. A couple more sentences. Biggie and Tup. I'm going to read a couple more. Cope returned to the US after the

war and became a member of Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences. There he found a mentor named Joseph Leedy, a professor of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania and leader of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Okay. A smarty pants. A schiznet. Yeah. Yes. Two total smarty pants. Nerd. Nerd. Total nerd. Leedy had found America's first dinosaur in Haddonfield, New Jersey in 1858. He found the first dinosaur. He found the first dinosaur that was in the, you know, in the ground. Wow. It's not alive. It's a. Oh, well, that's not as cool. He found the bones. I was going to say who wants to be that guy to find the first one in 1850. In 1858, there weren't

dinosaurs anymore. Wait, how come? They were gone. They were gone. They were gone. Why come? Why come they know here no more? They were gone. Where do they go now? Uber? I don't want to be a person anymore. The dinosaur fossil was 26 feet long, 14 foot tall beast named Hadrosaurus. How great would it be around for the first time people are putting together dinosaur bones? Oh my God. It just keeps going. I thought it was a cat. What they, what they thought it was, they're just like, it's like a question mark kind of shape, I think. It keeps going though. Yeah. There are, these aren't around, right? My God, this man was huge. This is a big fella. This fella was huge. Look at the size of this man's tail. Cope then made the second big dinosaur discovery

in America in 1866 in the exact same fossil pit. It was a, that's not much of a discovery. Well, you keep digging or looking around close to you probably look close to over there over the hill. He kept digging. It's not like it's in the exact same hole. It sounds like you just kept digging. It was a 22 foot two legged meat eater with eagle like talons and large claws. Cope called it laylops aquilinguus. Something tells me we're going to tweak that. That in, I believe that is probably Latin and it means eagle clawed terrible leaper. So it's a Tyrannosaurus rex. Yeah, what's an eagle clawed terrible leaper? I don't know if it's a Tyrannosaurus rex or I'll see what you call it. Tyrannosaurus rex, but it's an eagle clawed terrible leaper. I mean, a literal

list he was. Today it is known as dry source. Oh dry source. That was the dinosaur always wanted water. Gipped source. Driped. Does anyone have water? I'm a drysaurus. There's gonna be a lot of Latin in this one. It's not going to go well for anybody. Oh, well, if anyone could direct me to a swamp, I'm a drysaurus. If anyone has lotion or I just, it's so. No, those are tarpits. Oh, God. Oh, it's dragging me out further. I'm so dry. Marsh came back to the US and was appointed the first professor of paleontology in America at Yale. It was no coincidence that Marsh was made a professor after his uncle paid to create Yale's Museum of Natural History. At least things are the same at Yale. That's just that's how it works, though, right? Daddy buys a wing and then

you're fucking, you know, you know, it's just Marsh meticulously collected fossils with which he wanted to prove Darwin's theory of evolution. He had no family and he had few friends. The friends he did have called him the Great Dismal Swamp. It's not a very fun nickname for a man. Let's face it, that's the worst nickname any man has. Hey, GDS. What? GDS. What's that for? You. You're the GDS. Yeah, but what does it say? You're a Great Dismal Swamp. What? Have Daddy buy you a new nickname, asshole? Let's go, guys. Oh my god. Did you guys just get in a Mustang and drive away? Yeah. They're not invented. That's right. We're going surfing. When they returned, Cope and Marsh continued their common interest relationship. Cope even named an amphibian fossil after Marsh. I feel like

they're a little flirty. Teonius Marshy. Teonius Marshy. A year later. Isn't that a jazz musician? Yeah, really good one. Okay. A year later, Marsh found what he called a new and gigantic serpent from the tertiary and named it after Cope. Mosasaurus copianus. Cool. Or if you broke it down, Cope anus. So which you decide? Well, Cope anus is what you get in jail. I mean, if you're in the right jail. No. I mean, if you pay for a little something, pay for the extra sweet. No, you don't have to pay for it in jail. Yeah, I want to get the nice, the nice. I don't think you have any idea how the penal system works. I do. And I paid 14 extra bucks on orbits to get the business. This guy thinks he's in an Airbnb. That's the best. Marsh came to Philadelphia in 1868 to visit and see his and see Cope and and

Lady's work. Okay. By this time, Cope had published 37 scientific papers, even though he didn't have a degree. It's part of the whole Gentile amateurism thing. Yeah, right. At the same time, Marsh seems so Gentile anymore. He's at the same time. Marsh, who had two degrees, had only published two papers. Man, were they bangers? Oh, those two out of the park. At this time, academic prowess was measured by the number of papers you wrote. So scores 37 to two, if you're counting. Yeah, but it's not a pie eating contest that should be the substance. It kind of is a pie eating contest. So it really is just the numbers game. While in Philadelphia, Marsh asked Cope to give him a tour of the fossil bed in Haddonfield, where Cope and Lady had found their fossils. Have you ever had a girl ask to give you a tour of her

fossil bed? Okay, you know what she's saying. Oh my God, you know what she's saying. Her debris. Wait, Cope did happily and he introduced Marsh to people who worked there. Back then, paleontologists did not actually get their hands dirty. They just hired people to dig for them and find the fossils. So they would, they would be like, I want you to dig there. And then a guy would dig there and you'd stand there with your fan and a hat. When you're talking about ancient bones, do you really want to outsource that to like a day laborer? Well, that's just how it worked. No, no, my God, the skull. And then after we found it, after the fossils were found, they would buy the fossils from the guy. Oh, so they wouldn't even be there? But not necessarily. They'd just be like, come back with

bones. They would be like, yeah, sometimes they would just say, just give me some bones. And then I'll write about them. Or they would, or they would say, hey, dig here, dig here and bring me the bones. Then they wrote papers about the new finds to get the bones, write the papers. Sure. So Mars. So yeah, they're really not. Yeah, I'm not that impressed. Right. So Mars was very impressed with the quarry in Haddonfield. So impressed that he went ahead and paid off the quarry owner and had all future excavated bones sent to him at Yale, instead of to cope in Philadelphia. Wow. Okay. So he's now that maybe there's a little competition, bro. It seems like one guy might be an asshole. Hey, check this out, man. This is our pit where we get all of our dinosaur bones from. Oh, cool.

Yeah, I'm going to go get to go to the bathroom. All right, go to the bathroom. Hey, whatever comes out of your give to me. Okay, that sounds fair. Great. See you later. Cope was furious. And why? And accused Marsh of poaching his fossils. Cope's supply of fossils dried up. Cope would later say this act was the end of their friendship. Yeah, if you can imagine. Yeah, of course it is. It's only a slight, it's just like a prank. I don't know. I mean, he fucked my wife and that was kind of where the divide happened. And then things went from bad to worse. Cope rushed publishing findings on a new species of a pliosaur that had been found by an army surgeon in Kansas in Chiptum. Cope called the giant extinct aquatic reptile, Elasmosaurus. He quickly reconstructed

the skeleton and publishes work thinking it would shoot him up to the top of his field. Marsh came to the Academy of Natural Sciences to check out the reconstruction. Something tells me he rushed the puzzle. Marsh quickly realized something was wrong. Oh boy. This thing wasn't even aquatic, was it? Cope had put the skull on the wrong end. So it was on the tail. Oh shit. So he's like, look at the tail. It's huge. Print the paper. He put the fucking head on the butt end. Yeah, so what? Marsh pointed it out for everyone and then Leedy confirmed the error. Cope was mortified and published a correction. He then desperately tried to buy back copies of the American philosophical society journal in which he had published his findings. It was what we now call

deleting a tweet. Meanwhile, Marsh did everything he could to ensure that copies of the journal were still available. That's the best. Oh my god. Marsh went even further writing that Cope should have named the Elasmosaurus the Septosaurus or Twisted Reptile. Well, now he's just being rude. Now he's just a fucking asshole, right? Whatever was left of their friendship was now completely gone. Marsh later wrote of the situation, quote, when I informed Professor Cope of it, his wounded vanity received a shock from which it has never recovered and he has since been my bitter enemy. Wow. Yeah. Well, he was right. You could have just walked in and said the head's on the wrong part to him. Public shaming was not cool in the 1860s either. It wasn't. And things were just

getting started. In 1870, Marsh led the expedition to what were known as the Bone Fields of Kansas. The Bone Fields were now accessible because of the new railroads into the West. But it was dangerous country due to the natives not enjoying all of the settlements and whatnot. So there's still kind of being assholes. The Indians? Yeah. Yeah, the American Indians are still like, hey, we live here. This is our place where it's our land. I swear to God, it's like how many times do you have to not really apologize hundreds of years we've been living here doing our thing? Like, how many times do we have to kind of not say we're sorry until this is okay? I don't know what's happening. Like I live here. Yeah, I get it. Okay, now get the fuck off. Okay, wait. Fuck off.

That's where the weird part. Show the guns. Okay, fuck off. Are those blankets? You guys like blankets? Yeah. Yeah, here you go. You want a small box box? Do you want a small blanket? Yes. Parks. At this time, the Indians, the American Indians that were most upset were the Sue. So they're basically war with the Sue, the Americas, Americanites. Watch out for a lawsuit. When they first set out, they made their way through Nebraska escorted by Calvary and using guides from other Indian tribes. And there were celebrities, Buffalo Bill accompanied them on the first night. Sure. Right? Oh yeah. That's what happens when you cruise into a new town. Whatever. You're gonna see some people. Mm-hmm. It was tough going. They marched over burning sandhills with no rocks or

trees or any sign of water. The water they did find was undrinkable. They were saved by rainfall and drank water from the brim of each other's hats. They could just drink from their own hat. Oh, no, they had to wear it in order to... Yeah, I think... I mean, boy, talk about a broke back mountain motorcycle. Can I drink water from your hat? You know what? If you cup your breasts right there, I can drink out of that. But if I just drink a little water out of your mouth. Lay down. Wait a minute. Face down. I'm gonna drink out of your bottom. Okay, wait. They finally reached their destination. At first, their Native American guides attempted to stop Marsh from digging up the bones. They believe petrified bones were the remains of an extinct race of giants. The right

totally reasonable. Yeah, no people. They thought they were giant people. Look, you didn't specify. Finally, Marsh dug up a jawbone and held it up to one of the Native Americans horses. This is his tail. Look, look, like your horse. Yeah, see? And the Native American was like, oh, fuck. Holy shit, I get it. Our hundreds of years of lore is off. They're like dogs. They're big dogs. After that, the Native Americans were on board and went off and roll into camp with fossils. Wow, they really did a 180, huh? Yeah, it's full 180. Yeah. They're sacred giants. Let's sell them. They're big dogs. They're big dogs. This one's Clifford. Oh my god. We know all this because Marsh was a shameless self promoter and brought a reporter from Harper's Long to write about his

difficult journey and the finds he would undoubtedly make. Yeah. The reporter also wrote about the Sioux who made their presence known with campfires that got closer and closer and closer. So while they're digging, they're watching the Sioux basically saying, hey, guys, get the fuck out of here. Just lighting campfires closer and closer like this is a sign for you to go. I don't know what they're trying to tell us. Marsh's expedition began to bear fruit soon. They found tons of bones from the Cretaceous period a hundred million years ago. At one point, he discovered the fossil of a giant turtle. Oh, shit. Yurtle. Was it maybe a ship? It was a ship. That's a callback. And that's all he cared about. But the other members of his expedition were worried. He just

cared about the turtle. He just cared about the bones. Oh, just the bones. Okay. And the other members of his expedition were worried about the rapidly approaching Sioux fires and wanted to get the fuck out of there. No. Marsh only cared about getting the turtle out of the ground and into his museum in New Haven, which he did get out and onto a horse before they were attacked. Harper's accounts tell of Marsh's hunting abilities. He apparently enjoyed shooting at herds of buffalo and cut the head off of one for a trophy. Shooting at a herd of buffalo is pretty easy, though. Yeah, super lame. I mean, that's kind of like fishing a barrel. You should have to punch them. You have to go down and punch one to death. Dude. That's how you should have

to hunt buffalo. That really is how I, that is basically how I feel. Like I feel like if you go kill, like if you're in the wild and you go kill an animal with like, you know, bow and arrow and stuff like, you know, there's, that's, that's all right. I like that. Go do that. But if you're just shooting them with guns. If you're just shooting them with guns, like nonstop, like I'm a hunter, you know, nothing against, I mean, I think that obviously I'm not against. You're in a weird place right now. I'm going to a weird place. Edit this out, please. At one point, this party also came across a ceremonial funeral platform with the bodies of a Native American man and woman on top. Let me guess, they peed on it. Well, they had been dead for some time.

The brave had a rusty shotgun and a pack of cards in his hands. Don't tell me that he's going to fucking take that shit. No, but I just love that he had it. Oh, that they've liked that. Like, like the Native Americans for hundreds of years. He had a shotgun and a deck of cards. And a bottle of root beer. Hey, all right. While the rest of the party were said to be in awe of the scene in front of them, Marsh said, quote, well, boys, perhaps they died a small park, but we can't study the origin of the Indian race unless we have those skulls. Cut them down. No. Oh, wow. So he's just becoming like a bone freak. He's like a he's like a bone vacuum. Right. Yeah, whatever bones he finds, put it in the bag. Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah,

he's like turtle, he'll die for turtle bones. You're sitting there hanging out with a campfire and he's staring at you. You're like, no, I'm not. Yeah, like, but it's like a cartoon where like you turn into a cartoon ham, but you just become your skeleton. He's bones. Yeah, you're just the bones inside of you. Marsh had staked his claim to the fossil fields of the West and established a fossil trust for Yale. His biggest find was a finger like bone only seen before in small peridactyls, but this one was much bigger and turned out to be a peridactyl with a wingspan of 20 feet. Shit. Giant dinosaur bird. Yeah. Not to be outdone. Cope wanted to journey to Kansas, but he had difficulty raising funds for the expedition because Academy of Natural History

was a gentleman's association and they do not see any reason to go on expeditions. Interesting. They're the gentile. They're right. Right. Right. Right. I'm sorry. Shouldn't you just pay? Someone else will go do it. Someone will send it to you. Someone will do it for you. Do you have an address for mailing things? You have your hands? Okay, that's why. Cope ended up using his inheritance to fund his expeditions. Okay. He's doubling down. He's totally doubling down. Off he went into the exact region that Marsh considered to be his private fossil hunting turf. Well, I can only see this going well, David. Well, Marsh handled everything so well before. Yeah, yeah. No. When he wasn't on his turf. Yeah. Cope made several

important discoveries such as ancient reptiles called plicosaurs and mozosaurs. Cope took liberties when describing the beast and let his imagination go crazy. He described plicosaurs as having snake bodies 50 feet long and paddles to propel themselves. He described the 30 foot long mozosaur as a creature that swam through oceans with long tails. His exciting descriptions came alive on the page and were very much in contrast to Marsh's dry academic writings. So the cartoon strip was different from the science. That's kind of what we're saying. Right. Cope rushed to publish any findings he made in academic journals. One paleontologist later referred to the practice as academic carpet bombing. Wow. Yeah. Seriously. It's kind of great. Yeah. But that is what he's

doing. Yeah. This is just fucking whatever. It doesn't. I mean, there's no there's no buddy. There's no editor. No, there's nothing. In 1872, Cope made an agreement with the government surveyor to equip his like Judy Bloom. Wow. Go for it. Really, Ramona? Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's right, bro. Yeah. What about Beatrice? What about her? A2? Yeah. And fucking the other one. Socks the cat. Sure. In 1872, is she still alive? I can't. I mean, could easily be prolific prolific, but it's not hard when you're writing that. I know. But isn't it funny how like your perspective is like they like, I'm sure reading them now, I'd be like, what? This is driveled. But like when you're a kid,

you're like, my God, another classic. Like she's Stephen King, essentially. In 1872, Cope made an agreement with a government surveyor to equip his expedition to Wyoming. Oh, you're yawning. I'm sorry. Am I boring you right now? A little bit. Fuck you. Cope brought his wife and young daughter. Marsh had already been there and found several early mammal species. But when Cope arrived, none of the promised horses or supplies were there. The government surveyor had moved on. Cope scraped together a crew of men, including two of Marsh's employees. When Marsh learned of this, he completely lost his shit. Not only was Cope in his territory, he was taking employees.

He was filled with dread that Cope might retrieve as many bones as he had found. Oh, shit. Cope was so concerned he sent spies to keep track of Cope's progress. Wow. Cope was referred to by the codename Jones. That's not much of a codename. That's like a more common name. That that shows exactly how much creativity. Jones? That Marsh brought to the game.

Why don't you just call him, yeah. He had nothing but the most simple, obvious. What about Johnson? It's either Johnson or Jones or Smith. Or Epoch. Cope backwards. And his fear was correct as Cope discovered 50 species of mammals, fish, and reptiles. Okay. So he's actually hitting, it's kind of like when you sit at a slot machine and then you get up for a minute and someone pops a dollar and it wins big.

No, it sounds like back then, bones were just sticking out of the ground. But still, why was he not cultivating all these bones? That was his thing, right? Who, Marsh? You, Cope. Well, Cope was getting him, Cope just went and got a bunch. But the, I mean, he's missing species. What do you mean he's missing species?

Isn't, aren't we just now hearing Marsh just dig up all these extra? Oh, well, that's mostly what they were after back then was mammals. But, okay, all right. Okay. So they're trying to prove something. Marsh is trying to prove Darwin's theory of evolution is correct. Right. And Cope is trying to prove a different one, but he was wrong. So I didn't write it down.

Okay. But his was stupid. Stupider. Yeah. More stupid. So Marsh couldn't take it and headed back. So he, he was already back in the East Coast. So he couldn't take it and he went back out to the West to go on another expedition. Okay. Joseph Leedy was also in the West on his own mission at this point. So there was three dudes trucking around looking for bones.

Okay. At one point, Cope entered a fossil pit right after Marsh had left it. He found a skull and teeth, which he used to describe a new species. Unfortunately, those bones had been planted by Marsh as a trick. Whoa, he's fucking throwing fool's gold in there. Fake bones, bro. What? Oh my God. Fool's bones.

You know what I'm talking about? Fool's bones? You fucking fell for the fool bones, Jack? What? So how, how was he? What were these bones? He just made bones. I don't know how you make fake bones. Number one. And number two.

Who falls for fake bones? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But this, his trick would not be discovered for another 20 years. Oh, so forever. He's like, what do you mean when I discovered plantafish manumus? Oh yeah. Yeah. When you found plantafish manumus. Yes. I'll never forget when I first came upon it.

Oh man. You know, it's not normal to know that humans could fly back then, but apparently they had quite the wingspan. That's great. Something it might be an angel. How long ago did you find that? 15 years. Yeah, I'm going to wait a little while.

Some say my greatest discovery. Yeah. Oh God. You're an idiot. Excuse me? Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Why would a person have a fish head?

Did you ever ask yourself that? Obviously. It was a tadpole man. We've been very clear. I've had plenty of time to think about it. Why do you think I called them tatties? Why do you think I called them tatties? At the end of 1872, Marsh talked a fossil hunter into sending him a collection of bones that were promised to cope.

So he's really, okay. He's a fucking asshole. Really doing the undercut game. And some of these bones turn out to be an amazing specimen of a bird that had teeth. Marsh named it Tethios birdicus. Yes. That's what I thought it was. Icktheornus.

Icktheornus. Icktheornus. It was considered to be an important link between birds and dinosaurs. Cope had no idea of this deception. And he was still a pretty nice guy, Cope. At the end of the day, a couple of months later, Cope returned a box of fossils to Marsh that had been sent to him by mistake. Oh wow.

So Marsh is in the middle of like a one man battle. And Cope's like, here's some things you left. Sorry. I mean, I don't want to become, I don't want to undercut you. Here are your bones that accidentally came to me. I like you. And I like you. Okay.

All right. You like some flowers? No, but you got a lot of bones in here, huh? Don't worry about it. It's my business. Okay. Yeah? Yeah.

Now turn your head. Tell me to turn my head. I'll go when I'm ready. Turn your head. Tell me to turn my head. I'll turn my head when I'm ready. Oh, there's bones over there. Where?

Son of a bitch. But before he sent the box back to Marsh, he took a look at the specimen. After Marsh got the box, he wrote to Cope, I am glad you fully appreciated my bird with teeth. The Kansas fossil you sent me came all right. Where are the rest? And how about those from Wyoming?

The information I received made me very angry. I should have gone for you, not with pistols or fists, but in print. I came very near to publishing this with some of your other transgressions. I was never so angry in my life. So Duke sent him a box of bones. That's not a thank you. And then was like, hey, you've been all up in my shit, bro.

All those bones in the wet, any bones west of the Mississippi are my bones. See, that's one of those things where like, I mean, you shouldn't even give him that box of bones because it's given an inch, take a mile. He's the kind of guy who's going to be like, that which reminds me, you owe me more. Which reminds me of all the other bones. Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, remember that time when I invited you down to my place in Jersey and you just stole the bone? Here we go. Different thing. Here we go. We were kids. We were kids then.

Good God. Cope came home at the end of 1872. He had been out west in the field for six months. He was now exhausted and broke. Yeah. Okay. It's hard. Well, look, it's hard out there for a bone digger.

Cope and Marsh sent a series of angry letters back and forth. Cope kept cranking out the papers, describing his finds, while Marsh slowly and methodically wrote his. So he put out only a few papers that year comparatively to Cope. Yeah. But he's writing things that are good, right? I mean, he's like. Marsh is writing, yeah, sort of like legitimate.

Right. Yeah, he's cranking out legitimate shit where his Cope is just like doodling on a paper. Yeah. Yeah. At one point, Cope sent out a telegram naming a large rhinoceros-like creature with three blunt horns and tusks. He called Eobacillus.

Okay. So a telegram. So he telegrammed the discovery of a dinosaur. Well, so he's really moving. Time is money. So was it a singing telegram? Marsh couldn't take it. He had found the exact same fossils, but had not published his paper yet,

and Cope was now tossing out telegrams. So Marsh published a paper in the scientific journal American Naturalist, in which he described a new order of mammals called dino serata. And he said he found something called a dino serus, a large mammal also with three horns and tusk-like teeth. Now the same creature had two names. Okay. But then it turned out Joseph Leedy had named a similar animal

Unitherium before Marsh and Cope. His name is terrible. Yeah, horrible. And it sounds like an element. Unitherium, and he had named it before Marsh and Cope. So Marsh's paper attacked Cope's Erobacillus, pointing out six errors in Cope's description. He went on to call it a mythical beast,

more appropriate for the Arabian knights instead of the records of science. Oh, no, he didn't. Marsh whipped this all out even though he had not seen Cope's work. Okay. So he led the telegram and then went bug fuck and was like, no, I found this and yours is wrong. Okay.

Even though he's got, he can't tell. So things are going fine. Yeah. They're not losing their shit at all. No, no, no. Cope was humiliated and there was nothing he could do to stop Marsh's attacks on his new family. Marsh's attacks on his newfound creature.

But he did publish a new plan of classification for the beast saying that Marsh's names were wrong and his were right. There we go. Boom. Marsh would not back down and kept claiming that Cope's was wrong. He then went even further, insisting that Cope's science was shoddy. But none of it mattered because in the end, Leedie's Unitherium had one name at one.

Oh, at one? Yeah, because it was first. Right. Okay. He goes by whoever's first. So those other two guys like, no, yours is worse. Actually, Marsh ended up losing because Cope's Ebocellius still exists as a species eight to 10 million years younger than Leedie and Marsh's.

So today, both animals belong in the order of Dino Serata. So Marsh was second to Leedie. Right. And then Cope was the odd man out. Well, no, Cope had something. No, Cope's only got it in. Cope had something that was 10 years younger, 10 million years younger.

So he actually gets one too. Lucky. But the whole thing was a public shit show and scientists were appalled by the two men's behavior as they tried to attack one another. Yeah, because that's normally not the idea with science. No, it doesn't seem like it is. One man who the one man who was most disgusted by it all was Leedie, who ended up leaving the field for good.

Wow. He couldn't take it anymore. He's like, you guys, this is what if this is what paleontology is become. I do not want any of it. Get out. Who needs you? Good God. Again.

Get out. Get out. You're not a scientist. You're not a scientist. Get out. Scientists don't repeat what people say. Scientists don't repeat what people say. OK.

Fuck. But the competition between Marsh and Cope continued. In 1873, Marsh took a group of Yale students west. To experience the joy of being with him, the great Marsh, on a journey, they had to pay $15,000 each. Oh, Jesus Christ. Today, that would be $200,000. Holy shit.

Wow. He's a piece of garbage. Holy shit. This excursion would prove to be Marsh's last. Well, you immediately need to fuck you money after this. For the rest of the Bone Wars, Marsh preferred to enlist the services of local collectors and fossil hunters. Though he had enough bones to study for years,

the scientists' appetite for more would grow. While Cope had to tag along in government surveys, Marsh would collect whatever he wanted and bought fossil hunters to collect for him. So he just fucking sent dudes out everywhere. The two continued to bicker in scientific journals throughout 1873 trying to block each other's work and beat the other to naming rights. Always the best thing for science.

Yeah. No, that's how you know their heart's in the right place. So now they both turn their attention to the bad lands of South Dakota, where the discovery of gold in the Black Hills had increased Native American tensions with the U.S. Marsh went with General Custer's army into the bad lands. Oh boy. Custer was in charge of dealing with the Native American situation in the area.

That's a different story that turns out great. Okay, I must be thinking of a different customer. Custer wins. He's like the big huge American hero. To gain the trust of a chief red cloud of the Sioux and to convince him he was there for bones, not gold, Marsh promised red cloud payment for all fossils collected. Okay.

Okay. Marsh also said he returned to Washington, D.C. and lobbied for the Sioux and against their terrible treatment. Marsh was called Big Bone Chief and Bone Medicine Man by the Sioux. Big Bone Chief is a pretty dope name. If you're like rolling into like the Sioux tribe and they're like, you are Big Bone Chief. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, but yeah, tell the women. Tell the women Big Bone Chief is here. Big Bone Chief is here. Let them know. I will be visiting wigwams at some down. Bomer, boner chief coming through. Easy, easy. Let's not press it.

All right. All right. Rubbing your leg a lot, which is a boy. Hey, girl. Okay. Time to let's have a changing of the nickname ceremony. In the end, Marsh had to quickly load two tons of fossils and rush off before a hostile.

Oh, this is a tough tribe name. Minneconjo War Party arrived to attack the Sioux and anyone who was with him. So he's fucking just again. Load the bones, load the bones, load the bones. Shoveling bones on a fucking. Move, move. Careful there.

Careful. Really load them fast though. But Marsh did advocate for the Sioux. I mean, how do you quickly load? I don't know. You throw them in a cart. And I imagine there's an old miner on a horse. And he's like, come on, come on.

Hey, come on. I can see him right now. They're coming right at you. There's bones up in the mountains. I'll tell you bones. But Marsh did advocate for the Sioux in Washington. He said they were of a, quote, higher order of intellect and that they were being ripped off

by crept government agents. So he did actually say the exact right thing. In 1875, Cope and Marsh both took a break from looking for fossils due to financial strain. And because they needed to catalog everything they had found. So in reality, change big time. But so in reality, like they're not even making money. Like they're not making money hand over fist.

They're just sort of like, are they just not making money because they're competing too much against each other? No, I think they're spending too much money going on expeditions and paying guys for fossils. But that's because they're competing in a way, right? Yeah, like they're, yeah, they are losing money because they're trying to. They're not logging anything.

They're trying to outbid the other guy and outfox the other guy. So they're not being prudent with their cash. Up until this point, paleontologists like Cope and Marsh, were just looking for prehistoric mammals. They were trying to prove the theory of evolution through bones. One Darwinist scientist visited Marsh in 1876 and was amazed to see that Marsh had proven evolution

with his collection of horse fossils. One thing they weren't after were dinosaurs. The term dinosaur, or quote, fearfully great lizard, was coined in 1842 by Richard Owen. Okay, up until that point, there had only been a few fossils discovered of Marsh's 19 papers. Only two were on dinosaurs. Wow.

It's all just mammal shit. Okay. In 1877, a mining teacher and preacher named Arthur Lakes discovered enormous fossils in 200 million year old rocks in Colorado. They were far larger than anything that had ever been found previously. They were so large that they were originally thought

to be whale bones. Which, I mean... Right? Well, which, like in this day and age, you could say is like a possibility because of, you know, like the way lands formed. But back then, they would be like, how did a whale get in the mountain?

God damn, a big bird must have picked it up. No, no, no. All right, okay. Can I, can I stop everyone and give you a theory? Yep. I call it land whaling. Oh. These were whales with feet.

No. Webbed. Nope, you're out of your fucking shit brain. Can I make one more point on my whale? Go ahead. My whales had walked. Yep. Their heads were in their asses.

Okay. I'm done. Who else, who else has ideas? So after Lakes discovered, he wrote letters to Marsh about the gigantic bones. Right. He's like, dude, I got big bones. Dude, big bones.

Big, big, big bones. Marsh did not reply to the letters. Wow, he sent him to spam, huh? Yeah, Lake was looking for money, so he turned to Cope and Cope was all over that shit. Oh, Marsh. He paid to have the fossil sent. Marsh, you don't pass on this player in the draft.

But then Marsh found out that Cope was going to get the bones and he sent $100 to Lakes to get his hands on the bones that Cope had not yet paid for. Okay. Marsh then sent one of his field collectors to pay Lakes even more money for all the bones he dug up. So Marsh is getting the bones. Yeah.

Even though he was a prick. The field collector wrote to Marsh using the code name Jones for Cope. It's not a good code. That's another, that's just like another person's name. It's not like, you're not covering anything. Satisfactory arrangement made for two months. Jones cannot interfere.

Okay. Lakes shipped many bones back east to Marsh. Then the field collector talked Lake into going back on his agreement with Cope. Lakes wrote Cope and forced him to send the bones he had received from Lakes to Marsh. Wait, I'm confused. Wasn't Marsh the one undercutting and getting the bones?

Yeah. And then what happened? So Cope had already been sent a bunch of bones. Oh, he already got some of the bones. Yeah. Okay. And so. But then when Marsh found out about it,

then he was like, give me all the bones. Yeah, and so he had Lakes right to Cope and say send all the fucking bones to Marsh, even though I already sent them to you. Oh, okay. So he's like the ultimate dick. He's the ultimate bone dick. I mean, Cope is, yeah.

There's no bigger bone dick in the world. It's just... So, I mean, Cope must want to fucking kill him. Oh my god. The shipment included the first remains of a stegosaurus. Wow. Marsh had time... That's an A-list.

That's an A-list dinosaur right there. Yeah, that's a big one. That's a Tommy Cruise. That's how you get right in. You cut through the line. Oh, damn right. Marsh had tons of bones sent to Yale, and the Como Bluff Dig would turn out to have

the biggest discoveries, hundreds of types of dinosaurs. They were five to seven tons, 100 feet tall, and the size of 20 elephants. So he's just fine in all these fucking... So he really hit like... He hit the bone load. Yeah, he really did. Easy.

That's a, by the way, that's a porn. I don't recommend it. Oh, yeah, bone load. Hitting the bone load? No, don't hit the bone load. Don't hit the bone load. Even though Cope had gone through the humiliating experience of sending the fossils to Marsh,

so can you just imagine him packing up the boxes? Oh, man. Riding Marsh on there. Oh, yeah. You know, there was an incredible amount of feces on the bones. Sorry. That's sure. Sure, that's from the Earth.

Yep. Because it seemed fresh and human. Well, I mean, technically, it's all from the Earth. You know what I mean? Fine. You know what I mean? No, I know what you mean. So, but Cope hadn't given up.

He ended up securing bones found in Canyon County, Colorado. So he found more dinosaur bones close by. Right. Of course, these finds contained even bigger bones than the ones Marsh had snatched. Okay. So now he's got the bigger bones? Fucking on, baby.

I mean, this is Russia and this is the Cold War of Bones. Totally. Cope found the tallest dinosaur ever discovered Amphicillia, as more than 130 feet tall. Sure. And of course, Cope wrote in his papers that his dinosaurs were bigger than Marsh's. Hello, nanny nanny, under the column, nanny nanny boo boo.

Big Marsh. No, not Big Marsh. Big Cope. Cope. Marsh sent his field collector to spy on Cope and he managed to get into Cope's fossil storeroom. The collector managed to weasel his way in with Cope's fossil hunter in Canyon City

and got his hands on a smaller but very important bird-like dinosaur. And he made a deal for first refusal on any fossils Cope didn't want. First, like their screenplays? Well, so he fucking, he sends a guy out there who rolls in and fucking snoops around and then goes to the guy to get the bones. He's like, hey, man, I'll give you more money for that fucking fossil right there.

I mean, you want a little side cash? Want a little side cash? But how, I mean, this is the Sopranos of Bones. It's fucking insane. You don't know who, I mean, you just can't turn around without being fucked. No, it's completely insane. And it's from dinosaur bones.

But Cope isn't really doing anything. Except banging out papers. Yeah. He hasn't done shit. Right, but he should be learning. To do shit? Yeah, or to be a little bit more protective. At this point, he should be more evil, right?

He should be so paranoid. He should be paranoid, but he also should be like, I'm gonna kill some motherfuckers. Yeah, no, he really, yeah. I'm gonna kill motherfuckers. Yes. So where were we? Oops, this moved.

Hold please. Okay. In the end of 1877, Marsh had discovered a huge amount of dinosaurs unlike anything in the world had ever seen. Marsh announced the discovery of six new genera of dinosaurs, including the 50 foot long Apatosaurus, the carnivorous Allosaurus, and the Stegosaurus. Meanwhile, Cope wrote 33 papers on fishes, amphibians, reptiles,

mastodons, crocodiles, rhinos, as well as his colossal dinosaurs. Okay. This continued until 1878. Marsh named 10 new dinosaur species, Cope named eight. Cope was in the lead identifying dinosaurs, but Marsh was catching up quickly. Okay. They kept finding dinosaur fossils throughout 1879. Jesus.

The rivalry was getting worse. Marsh had his men destroy a fossil pit at Como Bluff because he was worried Cope's man nearby would find it. Okay. So now, now, now science. Now they're blowing up bones. Science is over now, right? Yeah, science is over.

Yeah, just, just make the, just make sure the other guy doesn't get any bones. That's the game. Because I love science. Yeah, because we'll figure it out after. I love science so much. I'm blowing up all of these fossils. I mean, that really is like, how do you not like take a step back and be like, hold on, wait, I'm no longer an archaeologist.

I might be getting a little myopic here. I think I'm a big picture. Big picture. Okay, let's make big picture. Blow it up. Cope wasn't much different when he finished excavating a site. He would have his assistants dynamite it, which would make it useless for finding fossils. I mean, so they're both blowing up their, their pits when they're done.

And if you work with them, you've got to be like, guys, dude, I'm here to learn about the bones. Dude, I came out here to learn. Shut up. Get the dynamite down there. Cope then came to Como Bluff and accused Marsh of trespassing and stealing his fossil. What? Which he had been.

Yeah. Jesus Christ. Cope also had a train full of Marsh's fossil diverted to Philadelphia. Yeah. I mean, how do you even get that done? Now Cope is fucking, well, you go down the railroad and you have to pull that lever. Oh, yeah. I mean, God, those were the days.

Those were the days. But I like it. Now he's fighting back. He's fucking standing up. Meanwhile, Marsh worked his Yale staff so hard and didn't pay them anything that he had a huge turnover. And he took all the credit. So he's taking these dudes out.

They're fucking digging up bones. And then he writes the paper in his name. Yeah. Just. So he's just a prick. He's just a fucking prick. Right. Cope would then recruit the staff that had left.

He's like the fat Jew. He's like the fat Jew. No one knows what you're talking about. The fat Jewish. Oh, nobody. There's a guy on Twitter named the fat Jew. Instagram. Instagram.

And he steals comedians' jokes and he got a huge book deal. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Follow him. Yeah, he's great. To the depths of hell. He's just a great thief.

So Cope would then start to recruit the staff that quit. Well, I mean, what is the end game? He starts recruiting Marsh's staff, right? So he, I mean, this is. This is. And he would work them for dirt on Marsh and his operations. I mean, it's really weird. It's fucking great.

Marsh and Cope are running. Don't you want to know about my resume? Now you said you worked for him. That'll do. That'll do. What's going on with his girlfriend? Do you want to know about the bones? What's going on with his lady?

Do you want to know about the bones? I know I haven't. I mean, I'm very. Right. You think this key still works for his apartment? Yeah. And what's going on? Bone wise.

No, is he wearing underpants? What the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. Because they were pushing. Oh, wait. So Cope and Marsh are rushing to name the dinosaurs because in science, the first name is that's the one that sticks. That's something crazy.

Because they were pushing, they were basing descriptions of new species on sparse material. Like, like it's like when you're like, exec sign a torus. That's a fingernail. Fingernail torus. Sometimes they mixed up bones from different animals or gave different names to the same animal.

What is so they just don't give a fuck. In 1877, Marsh speedily described a new species of a sauropod dinosaur that he named a patosaurus. But he did not have anything close to a full skeleton. He only had some vertebrae and part of a pelvis. I told you it's called halfasaurus. It's called bitsosaurus. It's called bitsosaurus.

Two years later, Marsh quickly named and described another sauropod. This one he called brontosaurus. Okay. The brontosaurus was also based on just parts of a skeleton. Then in 1883, more of the skeleton was dug up. He now had the full skeleton. Okay. He's like, wow.

I mean, the neck was a huge part of this. Today, it is still one of the most complete, also based on incomplete weight. Today, it's still one of the most complete dinosaur skeletons. So that's impressive. Yeah. In 1883, after more of the skeleton had been unearthed, he... Shit. He shit?

No. I see what just happened. Today is one of the most complete sauropod skeletons known. But the problem was he was in such a hurry trying to beat Cope that he didn't notice the brontosaurus and the apatosaurus were the same species. Oh, boy. Due to scientific naming, the first name given a species supersedes all others. Oh, no.

So brontosaurus is no longer a valid scientific name. What? Brontosaurus is like Pluto? Dude fucked up one of the best dinosaur names on ever. Brontosaurus is great. No, it's not a dinosaur. Yes, it is. No, it's not.

It'll always be brontosaurus to me. It's not. It is, too. The apatosaurus. No, it's the brontosaurus. Yeah, apatosaurus. Apatosaurus. Or apat.

Apat? That mistake was, of course, discovered by Cope. Of course, quite the editor. Now, after all those years, Cope had found Marsh making the exact tape type of mistake Cope had made that left him open to Marsh's ridicule so many years ago when he put the skull on the tail. Oh, shit. Unfortunately, paleontologists only conclusively showed that the name was wrong

and that brontosaurus did not exist in 1979. Oh, shit. Well, were they still alive? I told you fuck. I knew it. Hey, I told you I'm gonna love you. Fuck. Museum exhibits around the world had to be changed.

Oh, what? Yeah. So they don't even say brontosaurus? No, no one says brontosaurus. Oh, I've been saying it for years. Well, that's not real. Yeah. Marsh kept piling it on.

He next took Cope's first find, Leelapse, Leelapse, aka the Eagle Clawed Terrible Leaper, and renamed it Dryptosaurus. Dryptosaurus? Drip, drip. Driptosaurus? Driptosaurus. Driptosaurus. D-R-Y-P.

Driptosaurus. Driptosaurus. So he just renamed the dinosaur. That's fun. You know what? Welcome to the game, bitch. Yeah. I mean, they are essentially like a dinosaur.

You know, it's like a cat. You can just change its name. Nobody's gonna give a shit. He did this in a footnote in a paper he was writing about another dinosaur. Well, that's a little subversive, isn't it? He said that the Leelapse. Oh, by the way, that name's changed. Not a thing anymore.

Anywho's. It's like he's so mad that Cope noticed that the brontosaurus doesn't exist. Right. And he knew, and he knew he was fucked. Yeah. That now he's just trying to do the same thing, but it's such a pathetic lame attempt. How do you do it? Release that news on Saturday.

Oh, fuck. Marsh said that the Leelapse had already been used as a name, so it had to be replaced. Very soon after, Marsh had named a new discovery, Titanosaurus. Then Cope, then Cope pointed out that that name had already been used. Marsh, Marsh was forced to rename the dinosaur. Titan, how do you not know? Just screaming in his office. But how does it?

Throwing shit on the wall. Motherfucker. Titanosaurus, how do you not know that's used? Yeah, that's one of the first. How do you not run a vet on that? Cope and Marsh were rushing things so fast, they were filling up their literature with mistakes. Marsh's morosaurus was really Cope's chimerosaurus. And Cope's hypes or hoppus was Marsh's stegosaurus.

I mean, these guys don't give a shit. They're out of their fucking minds. It's like, now it's like dudes on meth, fine bones. Many of their finds were not uniquely different from each other. And Cope and Marsh actually knew that some of the fossils they found had already been discovered by other people. And it turns out the guy who cranked out the most names as fast as he could made the most mistakes.

It is estimated that there were 20 names for every actual species found. What? To say Cope blew it would be an understatement. 20 names? For every 20 names, one was an actual species. Oh, but still, that's, I mean, that's insane. Yeah, no, that's a terrible rate. I mean, that's like a, that's, well, when you're writing them on telegrams.

But you can't, I mean, that's still impressive. Did he name that many? To be that off? Did he name that many not real death threats? No matter how shitty you are at this, that's still pretty off. Oh no, he should get an award for that. I mean, yeah. Yeah, to ensure that his work got recognized, Cope bought the American

Naturalist Journal in 1877. Oh, cool. So he's Rupert Murdoch. He's got his own scientific journal. Perfect. Between 1879 and 1880, Cope published 76 academic papers. Oh, I mean, they must have just been dog shit. I mean, that is, I mean, depending how many years it is, because it could be 24 months.

Yeah. But it also could be less. Still. It could be like, it could be like, you know, come on. 18. Yeah. So he, so let's see. I mean, he's like the black keys of scientific dinosaur articles.

So he pushed, he pushed out 76 papers. Dude, come on. I mean, over his life. He wrote 1,400 articles in just a few years. The number of known dinosaur species jumped from a small handful to more than 100, but many of them weren't real. But by the fake a source, fake a source is a great one. Not real a source.

By 1880s, Marsh had pretty much had it. He wanted to put Cope out of business. Marsh had connections in Washington and he started to use them. He got himself appointed as chief paleontologist of the newly created US geological survey. And he got himself elected as head of the National Academy of Science. Okay. Okay. Being an amateur, Cope was not considered for either posts. Okay.

Now, Marsh had an institutional support and he had unlimited funds, federal funds, right? Right. So why not do the prudent thing and try to shut Cope down? He then began cutting Cope off from government funding that he had been getting for years. By 1886, Marsh had a budget of 500,000 and even more money from Yale. He pushed and succeeded in having the nation's paleontology center from Philadelphia to New Haven. Wow. I mean, that's a big fuck you. There were now tons of fossils with Marsh at the Peabody Museum.

The problem was that he was slow and methodical. And so most of them were just sitting around waiting to be looked at. Good. And the name of science will delay everything. Okay. While Marsh was becoming top shit, Cope was spitting out. His influence was dwindling, having been cut off from federal dollars. His inheritance was almost gone. He invested in a silver mine in New Mexico to try to turn his fortune around. I guess it doesn't work.

But that turned out to be a bad idea and he lost everything he had. He then applied for jobs at Princeton, the Philadelphia Zoo and many other places with no success. The zoo won't take him? Zoo wouldn't take him. He sold his house. By 1890, his wife had left with their child, and he was living in a small apartment in Philadelphia. Oh, God.

All he had were his fossils. Oh, God. Just a dude in a little apartment surrounded by bones. Oh, he definitely will send the bones. Marsh wasn't done. What? He won. Leave him alone. No, what does Cope have? I mean, I don't think he has part in the pun of coping mechanism.

But what does he have? He has bones. Okay. Leave him his bones. Using his position, Marsh got a law passed that said all fossils collected with the help of government funding now belong to the Smithsonian. Why doesn't he just say everything that Cope has I get?

Why doesn't he just make that law? That's the bill. And just to dig the boot in, he had a clause put in that said- I can fuck Cope's wife. Who's not even with anymore? Ah, he had a clause put in that said this included scientists who had accompanied government expeditions at their own expense. Oh, I mean, Cope, Cope, Cope, Cope.

So if you just went out on your own and- Those are mine. That exactly described Cope. Now he was trying to get his hands on the last thing Cope had left, his fossils. Cope fought it and came up with receipts and documents that proved he had paid for almost all of his collection out of his own pocket. Cope then went apeshit at Marsh's attempt to steal the fossils. Oh, boy.

Like he had him backed into a corner. He had him dead. Oh, yeah. And then he went after the one thing you don't go after. You don't do that. You don't go- Dude lost everything. Dude lost his house. He lost his job.

You leave him. He lost his family. But you don't come after my bones because now it's personal. Yeah, yeah. The audience stands up and applauds. Cope had been collecting dirt on Marsh for years. Oh, shit. He had records of nefarious underhanded dealings and accusations of not following scientific

standards. Oh, boy. He called these records the Marchania. Again, naming is not a strong suit for either one of these gentlemen. The Marsh Palm. Yeah, some way better. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think Marshania. The fuck Marshes. That's a party. Yeah. That's a party for Marsh. It's an alien party. It's a party for Marsh.

Yeah. Yeah. That's not what you wanted to sound like. For aliens. You just say aliens? Yeah, it sounds like Martian. Oh. Settle down, baby.

Well, that would be a party for Martians. Oh, god. Dave, don't be- A specific alien. Don't fucking Marsh me. I'm Cope. Cope got a job offer, finally. At Blockbuster.

I'm somewhere. University of Pennsylvania gave him a teaching position. Was he just getting pranked by Marsh? No, he took it. And then his chance to take down Marsh came in the form of a shoddy reporter. Cope took the information that he had to a freelance journalist at the New York Herald. The journalist didn't mind making stuff up and was happy to not check sources. Cool.

On January 12th, 1890, the paper published a story with the headline, Scientists Wage Bitter Warfare. Okay. For some, this is from the paper. For some time, past a volcano has been slumbering under the geological survey. Now it has, yeah, it doesn't make sense. So the beginning's tough. I'm sorry.

Let me read that again. For some time past, a volcano has been slumbering under the geological survey. Better. I read that wrong. Yes, this is better. Very tired. It's okay. I'm here for you.

Do you want to put your atomizer on? Nope. Now it has arrived and the long pent-up forces have gained their freedom with a rush and a roar, which if it does not carry the present management of the survey to its official destruction, will certainly disturb the entire scientific world of America and bring in its train a series of changes and counter changes, recriminations and reproaches, which will ring from one end of the land to the other. So the paper's saying the shit's going to blow it up.

Yeah. The article accused the USGS of being a powerful and poorly organized machine that was being used by Marsh to gain favors of money and prestige. It also said Marsh was destroying fossils out west to stop other researchers from getting them, and then he had assistants writing his papers and not giving them credit. All true, right? Yeah. Marsh came across like a villain and a plagiarist.

Cope had gone public with his resentments and brought other scientists in his witnesses to the corruption in the article. So he, Cope went out and named names of people who didn't like Marsh or dragged other dudes in. The scientists in the fields of geology and paleontology were not thrilled when they found themselves quoted and mentioned in the article. I wonder why? Marsh defended by attacking Cope in his own articles. Oh, God.

Saying Cope was a lying, jealous, and brought up the time Cope put the skull on the wrong man. Man. Fuck, does he regret that shit? He's like, God, God, that fucking head. What time? You know what a curious George did it and it was fine. It was fine. They made a whole episode out of it that people enjoy.

Okay. The fight between two fossil experts hit the national papers and lasted for three weeks. Wow. The Philadelphia Enquirer said Cope was going to lose his job at the University of Pennsylvania unless he could prove his accusations. And there was a response. The USGS was already in the crosshairs of some politicians due to their policies, particularly out West, due to concerns about takeovers and abandoned homesteads.

In 1892, those politicians used the accusations of Cope to start an inquiry into the entire USGS. Oh my God, they're going to shut down his baby. These people were concerned that America was paying more for science than any other country in the world. This is probably the last time I didn't know what America had that fear, right? Yeah. Congressional Democrat Hillary Herbert went after Marsh for publishing expensive books

and funding long expeditions. He was most upset about a book Marsh had published called Birds with Teeth. Fuck you, Cope. This just happened to be Marsh's greatest achievement in proving evolution. What are we doing financing books about birds with teeth? Oh, shit. Birds with teeth became a phrase for those opposed to scientific research funding. Oh, God.

Global warming versus climate change. It's the fucking evolution. It's the same fucking people. It's the same people. The best. Good thing we've evolved. No. I think we might be proving Darwin wrong currently based on this dollop.

The USGS budget was cut in half and the department of paleontology was dissolved. Okay. Marsh was ordered to resign via a telegram from the head of the USGS. I hope it was a singing telegram again. Now it's like former buddy is sending him a telegram. Fuck off. But it's singing, Dave. Fuck off.

Now Marsh had lost his position and along with it his salary. Those were the ways he funded his work. So he was forced to sell his house to fund his own research. Oh, I bet I think I know who he hates. Many of his allies in science were retiring or had died. Under the rules Marsh had created, the USGS had a right to all fossils gained through government-funded activities. Okay.

Unfortunately Marsh had not done his record keeping properly. Cope had and his strict bookkeeping kept Marsh from snatching his fossils. But in an exciting and wonderful example of irony, Marsh lost more than 80 tons of his bones because of the rule that he had created to get Cope of his fossils. Dummy. What a dumbasaurus. Fuck you.

No, fuck me. Oh, wait. I love that. That's great. It was just a small fraction of his collection, but still a painful loss to a man like Marsh. That's a small fraction? These guys had, they were like the bone kings.

They're like dubiers. They're, they just have all the fucking bones. Jesus. So anyway, now Marsh is screwed. Yeah. As Marsh, as Marsh sunk down, Cope rose up. He got a position on the Texas Geological Survey and kept quiet about Marsh's collapse.

He had learned from the previous public fight. He was next promoted to Professor of Zoology, Zoology, the former position of leading. So now he's got his mentor's position. And for the cherry on top, he was elected president of the National Association for the Advancement of Science. Marsh must have been pissed. In the exact year Marsh stepped down as head of the Academy of Sciences.

That's spicy. Though Cope's fortunes would fall again as he became ill, he slowly lost his positions and he was forced to sell some of his fossil collection just to get by. Marsh was not better off. Marsh had to ask Yale for a salary just to survive. Dave, I hope that they end up as roommates. God, with nowhere else to turn, Marsh and Cope got a one-bedroom apartment.

You want to get dinner? Sure. We'll take the chicken. Do you want bone in her? Bone, no bone. Wishbone. No bone. No bones.

Yeah, just them fighting over a wishbone. Yeah, yeah. Impoverished and suffering from kidney disease, Cope was now self-treating with morphine. He received a surprise call from an artist named Charles Knight. Knight wanted to recreate dinosaurs as they had looked when they were alive and Cope's amazing imagination seemed the best place to start. Together, Cope and Knight put flesh on the bones of the dinosaurs in illustrations.

Knight's drawings with later influence Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel, The Lost World, the first dinosaur novel. So, of course, it takes a guy with a great imagination to bring them to life and to tell people what they look like. Although now people are like, yeah, that's not really what they look like. Come on, let me hear that. Come on, it's too late. Cope died in April 1897, still hiding notebooks under his bed to keep them from Marsh.

I mean, the odds that Marsh tried to get Cope's bones are strong. And he pieced them together with an ass head. Hold on. Oh, God. Cope was 56 years old, but he wasn't done with Marsh. He had his skull donated to science so his brain could be measured. His hope was that his brain would be proven to be larger than Marsh's brain. Get the fuck out of here.

Are you fucking kidding me? He won't, I mean. Because back then they thought the bigger brain meant smarter. So who, dude, who cares what they, I mean, that is, like, he should have also had his balls compared because talk about a callback. Marsh did not accept the brain offer. Cope's skull is still at the University of Pennsylvania. Oh my God.

Two years after Cope's death, Marsh walked home on a rainy night and came down with pneumonia. He died two weeks later at the age of 68. He had $186 in his bank account. How many bones though? A lot. Yeah, okay. According to the stats, Marsh won the Bone Wars. Both Cope and Marsh made significant scientific finds,

but Cope found a total of 56 new species and Marsh 80. Marsh was responsible for naming the most dinosaurs ever found. He named the Apatosaurs, Brownosaurs, the Stegosaurus, the Allosaurus, the Diplodocus, the Triceratops, and many more. He had the advantage because later in his career, he had the money and manpower to do what he wanted obviously until that quickly came to an end. Yes. The feud between Cope and Marsh both helped and hurt paleontology.

The Bone Wars also had a negative impact on the entire field. The public fight between Cope and Marsh harmed the reputation of American paleontology in Europe for decades. It's amazing to think that they were thought of as, like, disagreeable people. Right? Yeah, because now you think of them, they're like, oh, this is a nice bone, let's help each other. Jesus. We'll piece it together.

Many fossils were destroyed by the two men as they tried to keep specimens out of each other's hands. We're probably missing dinosaurs. Oh yeah, yeah, we probably are. When they started their work, only 18 dinosaur species were known to be from North America, and those were just pieces and parts like a vertebrae or a jaw. The two men found over 130 species of dinosaurs because they were trying to outdo each other. They also found tons of other prehistoric mammals like fish reptiles and birds. When Cope and Marsh died, they both left behind massive fossil collections.

Their collections are now in museums and still are a great source of data for paleontologists. In 2013, HBO announced plans for a Bone Wars movie to star Steve Carell and James Gandolfini. Oh, what the fuck? What the fuck? It really was the Sopranos. So that's not happening. The Sabonos. So that, wow.

Why? That's crazy. Yeah, it should be. It should be a TV series, not a movie. It should be anything. That's a fucking seven-year TV series. Jesus Christ. Right?

Yeah. They're like bootleggers. There's not enough, a movie couldn't cover what that movie has. The expansiveness of that story. Yeah. Yeah, no, it just goes on forever and it's insane. Oh yeah, it's insane. And it escalates and it just keeps building and there's no way a movie could do it justice.

You're saying that's why Gandolfini died? I'm saying it might be, yeah. That's the point of the whole fucking story, man. Good work, dude. Thanks, William. Something to think about. Maybe we can, now I guess we can't make it anymore. What?

The movie with Gandolfini? Yeah. We can dig him up. We can, he can be bones in the movie. He should be a skeleton. I'm going to back off this whole thing. It's taking a dark turn. You think he's still doing blow?

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