paleontology-history

Between 1877 and 1892, two American paleontologists — Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh — waged a personal and scientific war so destructive that they dynamited fossil sites, bribed each other's workers, and published species descriptions from train cars to claim priority. They were also, together, astonishingly productive: they named over 130 new dinosaur species, established the frameworks of American vertebrate paleontology, and made fossil hunting front-page news. The field they left behind was built on rivalry as much as science.