i'm seuss is senior scientist curator of fossil vertebrates in

the department of paleobiology at the smithsonian's national museum of natural history has received a speech in from harvard university. previously, he as vice president arch and at the royal ontario museum in toronto and was a professor of zoology at the university of toronto. from 2004 to 2009, cancer served as associate director for research and collections at the national museum of natural. he published extensively on dinosaurs and other extinct vertebrates. he's done a lot of media appearances with america and europe, and with that, please join in welcoming our very own monsters. okay.

good evening. it's my pleasure to talk to you today about one of the strangest episodes in the history of science in the united, the infamous bone wars. this happened during the 19th century, and it seemed for many years my paleontology had sort of a dark shadow over it because thought this was really a science for very strange people. but the thing was that over time we realized that in fact these bone was actually also had an upset. and i'm trying to talk to you today about a little bit about the downside and upside of this peculiar episode in history now as you heard i'm a paleontologist i study ancient organisms and being historical science. i also have a keen interest in the history of academic disciplines and in this context

that i have collected and read and studied a lot of primary materials related to both the combatants in this peculiar exercise and the many books on the bone wars, most of which a lot of incorrect information. but there was also a very nice pbs program on it. but the fascination this continues and people keep an earth in new details about actually happened in all those and there was even a plan at some point to make movie out of the whole thing with. steve carell as one of the people, edward cope and james gandolfi as professor marsh. fortunately, nothing came of it. i think that both actors, both i like it must have similarity to either character or appearance.

the two combatants were. othniel charles marsh, who spent most of his career at yale and edward cope, who was based in philadelphia and for time taught at pennsylvania, but also was closely associated with the academy of natural sciences. philadelphia, which was the first major natural history. the united states long predate our own museum, since both gentlemen had very different backgrounds and.

before i get into the bone wars, i would like to introduce you a little bit to biographical backgrounds. first with edward drinker cope. he descended from a very wealthy and prominent family in philadelphia. all of his both his grandfather and father were a major shipping shipping magnates who ran a regular parcel service between philadelphia and liverpool and also in the owned a lot of real estate in pitt, philadelphia, the region around philadelphia here. and so i grew up in a very comfortable background and we both grandfather and father, very prominent members in the philadelphia, society of friends. and so he was early on introduced into that community. he went through excellent schools there. and for time briefly attended haverford college, which was a major college supported by the society of friends, young edward

drinker cope was already a very precocious child. there's a picture of him at age ten as the only baby picture i've ever found of him, even at very age. he was interested in natural. he would roam outside on his father's farm to look at any insects, birds whatever. had a few turtles. but he also loved to go to the academy of natural sciences, which had great exhibits of fossils skeletons, minerals and other things that he was keenly interested in. and i show you here a that he made as a child of a ichthyosaurs skeleton, which is remarkably accurate. in fact, i don't think most of my former students would have drawn anything like this. and you can see that he was really very observant of the details. this is a fairly large animal, and you really have to look very closely to see all of the details that depicted here. however, cope was not really interested in college and

university. he, as i said, briefly, attended haverford university, probably more through his family's influence than anything else. they ultimately sort of managed to get in and basically honorary master of arts. but, you know, he didn't have a proper college education. however, he did spend a great of time at the academy of sciences where he came under the supervision of joseph lighty was a american naturalist in the 19th century who has something described as the last man who ever knew everything he wrote on gemstones. he was paleontologist was a leading expert on human and wrote the standard textbook for medical students used in the 19th century. and he was one of the fathers of parasitology. fact, he was the first person to realize that was caused by parasites any more. so lady was a very affable, gentle person, and so he was a

great supervisor for cope and basically called probes to the collections, dissect things, stabby things. and so cope actually built up very a really solid knowledge of natural history and started already in his early twenties on various topics such as snake anatomy, snake classification and various other subjects related to modern animals. however, academy of natural sciences, thanks to the efforts of joseph lighty, also was accumulating very large collections of fossils and at some point cope just got hooked on the fossils and focused his studies on these particular specimens like he had first come to the attention of the american public as the discovery of america's first dinosaur. this dinosaur was in a mound pit in the town of haddonfield, new jersey, just across the river from philadelphia.

and these small pits were being actively quarried at the time, because small is a clay substance that is very rich in calcium carbonate and phosphate. and this marble was used as fertilizer by farmers across the country. so this was a major industry that only vanished. the arrival of artificial devices later in the 19th century. on your right you see a picture of the market from the bones of the hydrogels probably literally changed. there's now a little nationalist topical marker at the site, but you see now it's completely overgrown and nobody has tried to go back there and dig again. this lady posing as a young researcher of the shin bone of the hadrosaur, and on the right side you see what's known of the skeleton in sort of dark gray bones, actually, bones that are known. it may have been originally complete skeleton, but farmer who discovered this, even though

he ultimately reported to the academy of natural sciences, was giving a lot of the away as trinkets, some were ultimately recovered, but most of them probably disappeared. and this is very unfortunate because this would have been america first reasonably complete dinosaur, but enough was known to really show that this was the first american dinosaur. at that point dinosaurs were only known from three different species. it had been found in the united kingdom. so our knowledge of dinosaurs was very limited. and it's actually due to light this work that we got an early of these animals that they were in fact quite different from other extinct and living reptiles in many features. and so was one of the first people who supported the formal recognition of dinosaurs as a distinct group of reptiles by the british anatomist richard owen, 1842.

a lady had also done a lot of other important work on fossils. he described the first dinosaurs from the american west see on the left, the plate forms. it's from publication. now this fossils were collected as part of the territorial surveys of the western interior by 13 and then to be a hayden and hayden was also the dolphins gave this fossil material to lady who then described it. and you can see here very early represented by a number of teeth at the top. you actually see teeth that are sort of worn down to these sort of prismatic structures, which are actually teeth of a relative of pterosaurs. and then you see a variety of meat eating dinosaur teeth, which looked like steak knives, blade screws serrated edges, and at the bottom. you also can see some of a dinosaur. so this was not really material. indeed, today one probably would sort of call collected for some little favor kids at home, but

no paleontologist would spend much time with such fragmentary material. but it was done during these territorial surveys. what people basically wondered about and picked up things left and right there was no kind of systematic excavation that would have yielded more complete in time. however, this started to change and even of these later works here on the mammals from the central zoo from the tertiary periods after the extinction of the dinosaurs you got some pretty good specimens for here at the center is the of a sheep sized early cat eating mammal called a brutal sear and what you see is what turned to be actually very common out west at the top you see the jaw of dog like carnivorous mammal which you also described. so we actually describe the many species from the west and this became very important for later paleontological exploration. now to ms.

marsh did get a childhood with a silver spoon in his mouth. he was born in lockport in york, which, as you can see from this old print, was kind of a rough and tumble place. the time it only became more with the construction of the erie canal and was the son of kenneth marsh, who then reaching from new england from actually from what's peabody, massachusetts. and he was a guy who sort of tried this index drop and ultimately decided move out to the western frontier. but somehow he never made it much past the western frontier of new york state and federal debt to farm with rather modest success. he married a woman, mary peabody, and they had several children. and i think often charles was the only one that actually survived childbirth his wife mary was the sister of one george peabody who turned eight

or so dry. good business into a fortune real estate and banking and in fact become what became of america's first really prominent rich people in modern a multimillionaire by a great margin. and this turned out to be quite fortunate of neil grew up and went to local schools but he early on had an interest in natural history and he was not really interested in taking his father's job as a farmer. and this was a good thing because his mother died early. but his uncle george peabody took a keen interest him and realized that he was actually quite a bright lad. and so offered him support for education. so my went to phillips academy, andover and then enrolled in sheffield scientific at yale university from, which he

graduated in 1862. there's a picture of him sitting with some jaunty summer hat posing for the camera as a graduate. peabody, enormously wealthy, established a major banking empire, and he also involved other people like pierpont morgan. and so who later on really built the basic structure of american finance, which in many ways still persists. the present day peabody was one of those people who was not really into earning money, but he actually wanted to use the money for good purchase. so he supported a great many causes, including his friend o.c. marsh. so as the civil war broke out in 1861, both cope and decided to go to europe. this was something that was done in prominent families educate oneself to, travel to various countries and admire all

primitive civil compared to the united states and to also learn from those european academics. because at this time, american science was still in its infancy, and the really big scientific institute signs were to be found in britain, france and germany and so both cope and marsh went over to europe. they first met in berlin, 1864 were both marsh and had gone to study with various people that i show you at the bottom. the brothers rose were the founders modern scientific, mineralogy and carl gottfried. the was the first person to systematic study protists single celled organisms, both living and fossil months. and he a very important work microbial algae that became basically the foundation of michael paleontology. initially, the two really got on like a house on fire.

they spent a number of days together talking about scientific interest and so on, and they left on good terms while they sort of continued to travel through europe and will eventually returning to the united states. that's when koch returned. he was very interested in his in the mountains of new jersey and he, in fact, relocated philadelphia to haddonfield to actually look for more fossils. and he was actually immediately success. he found the bones of a large meat eating dinosaur called the chick, called leigh lapse at london's leigh labs was a mythical dog in greek mythology that could run ever being exhausted. and this was a reference to the very long and slender yet powerful legs of this animals and that this means means it could crawl and you can see this claw. it's almost seven inches in length and.

so he realized that this was a really new and interesting thing unlike his headless horse, which was a harmless plant eater. this was clearly a proto animal that probably used its huge crowds as well as its typical blade, like teeth to subdue plant eating dinosaurs like the hadrosaur. unfortunately, as you can see from we modern reconstruct below it was a very fragmentary again again the quarry workers probably gave bones to other people who came by the markets for a small remuneration so in sort of a nice way of earning site income in a job that was probably very poorly paid. however, what happened was around this time osi marsh showed an interest in these small pits as well and still being good with cope. he asked whether he could come and visit him and, travel through the very small pits, so

no reason why you should decline this offer. and so marsh came down and visited very small pits, spent several days, very spitz, and then they parted ways. but when cope got home, he noticed after some time that none of the fossils were coming to him anymore. not. not the quarry owners had said anything of the quarry. workers had come. and so he looked into the matter and he found out that soon after he had visited the pits with marsh. marsh had gone back and talked to the race pit owners and told them that he would pay them nicely. they sent all of the fossils that they were finding straight up to his in this country. what you may read in a great many books was really the beginning of the conflict between these prominent. it's already quite common the searchers now became famous very

early on for a unfortunate reason, namely the infamous mistake of the alaskan source at, the time that he was still studying the markets, new jersey. you also heard about another fossil reptile, a large marine reptile that had been found by an army surgeon in kansas in a limestone that about the same age as some of the mountains and. he was excited to get the specimen. the army surgeon had contacts in philadelphia and so this material ended up the scope rather, with marsh and he very quickly put together a paper you see here a reconstruction of it. and this was a very strange skeleton. it has a super long tail, very short neck. it has a paddle at the front, but apparently no paddle at the back. and this was very odd because you look at the vertebrate, it clearly pointed in the opposite direction.

so processes on each point towards the head reptiles. but he put the skull, as it turned out, on the wrong end. this is even more puzzling. it turned out that the very tip of the alleged tail was actually the first letter and it had a fragment of a skull attached to it. but apparently he was in such a rush to discover discovery that he didn't pay too attention to it. he also so he is head and here is the find the pelvic without the hind limb. however based on his own illustrations the pelvic girdle actually had the socket. the hips socket that all animals hind legs have. there's no point a hip socket if you don't have the hind leg. so here's an early reconstruction and published for a popular paper around the time showing life in new jersey. it's a typical 19th century scene with nature in tooth and

it was pretty darwinian. we see a sea turtle here that is famously left standing the middle and being sort of shouted at by the l.s. mosasaurs, which looks like a sea serpent with sort of seal paddles at the front. now, for it was corpse that fortune that is old advisor to the flighty, looked at the material and pointed out that the head was indeed on the wrong end. and this of course was a huge embarrassment. now people always sort also say, like, oh, you pimentos, it's really don't know what you're doing. and particularly old base in the journal of comparative material to go on that of happened there's no shame in this reconstructions aside did you hypothesis and if you find anatomical information that contradicts your hypothesis well then you have to rethink the whole matter. but cope was such a proud person that he had a really hard time

with this and but he quickly went put the head on the wall on, the right and. and also suddenly quote unquote, discovered that there was a hind panel in the fossils that he had received from kansas. now, like he had only on this, in the notes of, the academy of natural sciences. and so this was not widely and cope really to get all of the original copies this 1869 paper back into his possession and then published a revised version that particular plate which was actually published in 1870, but he pre-dated it to 1869, hoping that people never notice the error. however, marsh ever copy that he did not part with and there are few other extant copies and very fortunate that i have one of these copies. we have the original version of the skeleton with the head on the wall.

it was thought this was and just further evidence that hope was not a very competent paleontologist and he didn't achieve time or. he didn't take it very seriously. marsh in those days was having a wonderful time because coming back from europe. his uncle george if in $150,000 which is about six, almost $6 million in present day purchase valued to build a museum at and get yale to a trade. the first professorship of paleontology just didn't have to be paid because he had given marsh so much money that he could live comfortably without a salary from yale university. so must became the first professor of paleontology in the united states given that he had such a nice financial cushion, he also built himself a really nice house as a picture of it. as it looks. new haven and he decorated the

excellent furniture. you also have an interest in a lot of very pricey hobbies, like he bred orchids. he was fascinated by asian japanese art and he sort of collected very avidly just about anything interesting under sun that he could purchase for this house is house now the home of yale's school of our streets and is known marshall so this was the erasmus horror story the bone was really got underway and they started in very places around the united states. the east coast is not generally considered a very promising place for fossil vertebrates because a lot of people, there's a lot of vegetation, all factors that sort of speak against extensive prospecting was out west. yeah. a few people that were vegetation, most places. and so you can really look at the and look for fossils.

it's so much actually went out in the field with a of enterprising yale undergraduates and you see them here sort of properly ready to go out there and collect fossils. now in this time, there were many problems because. the first trips went to wyoming, and at the time there was quite a bit of warfare between. the united states army and, the lakota sioux and so you had to ask yourself for the very that could occur it actually turned out that lakota thought that many of the people who fossil bones were kind of special, presenting some kind of special insanity. and since insane were considered sort of in some way holy, they them alone. so actually i'm told that they had to be worried about being shot or scalped or something of the. yes. in the middle of his students, he went out for two more field

seasons, particularly to wyoming. but after that he stayed in new haven and employed many collectors who would go out, do the rough work on the ground for it, for his research. so he mentioned wyoming territory. the first person who had worked in wyoming territory was actually hayden wood, collected felicity and lady actually went out at one point as well. but as soon as cope in marsh court in this night he realized that could not compete with his two brash young fellows and basically gave up on what would paleontology for many years is a picture of one of these promising fossil areas the bridger basin in northern north central wyoming. you can see all of these rocks beautifully and when you walk over the surfaces you keep seeing fragments of jaws, leg, bones, teeth and enough to do it. you can get a rather assemblage of it's a durable species mammals, reptiles sometimes if

you're lucky bird bones, turtle shells, etc. what i suspect were groups of animals that was exposed there were the so called uinta fierce. there's a picture here of hope standing next to one of his prized specimens, the skull of an animal called eagle soleus, which is a rather grand name, which means basically the emperor of the dog. and these were, despite these ferocious looking canines, were actually huge, somewhat rhinoceros like eagles and huge canines, probably served for fear of heights. males for females, territory. now both of them collected such fossils and a specimen of another form called you into cerium which moche collected and this is a complete skull to see. these are very robust, whether rhinoceros or even animals that represent an entirely extinct of extinct mammals. now, the problem was lightning

had already linked to into syria, but marsh and cope were not be distracted from this and they named whatever fossils they had as new species and in general creating huge taxonomic nightmare for researchers in the 20th century. we're trying to figure out which was the oldest name. so in addition to these spectacular you went to see us, there was also rich fauna with other things that, for instance, these are quite archaic browsing mammals like the coleford, which itself the size of a small cow. this atrial feel is a jaguar size, early carnivore. then this mass, which would have been a rather wheeze like animal, which is actually closely related to the ancestor of all modern carnivorous mammals. and then there's this, which is a primate and is most closely related to lemurs also other primates known that are much closer, much more related to the group that extends it grew that

later on, monkeys, apes and ultimately humans. this is also the time when the first attack is launched. print by marsh and cope and contained concerns that you interferes and you see it says contains professor culp's long promised quote unquote explanation of the many errors and false statements released publications and a most remarkable document. this explanation is as sleight of hand performance with and dates. it shows practice and is amusing to those familiar with the subject. and tomorrow this it suggests said reflections. and that's just the opening paragraph. so in to the battleground, the wyoming territory there also developed quite a battle over the fossil resources in western kansas. the les miserables the cope is

quite early on this head on the wrong end comes from a unit called a niobrara chuck this is from the cretaceous period and it's the most deposited in a huge shallow seaway that during the cretaceous period divided north america into western parts is also known as so. there are media into the eastern part, which much more closely connected europe. so we had this vast sea, very similar in some ways to the mediterranean and in many areas deposited migrates. they formed these limestones which are nicely and contain myriads of fossils, invertebrate fossils like ammonites, squid like creatures, huge sea lilies that were free floating, lots of fishes including a whole bunch of great sized sharks, some of which even more impressive teeth and a bite. and a lot of marine reptiles. so marsh was really interested in those and based on cope's

original papers and he contacted a gentleman named benjamin, who also came from new england. and much had a very truly uncanny was he started out as a professor and was what was going to be kansas state university and later he was actually in state geologist kansas and marsh being a much being a very obliging friend and fellow immediately you sort of got into marsh's good graces and he was steep very loyal to marsh and anything he or his students found was sent to new ways. and here's one of his price discoveries pilot source. this is a giant mosasaur, a a length of up to almost 45 feet. this is an animal that is most closely related to chase monitors lizards like komodo dragon and to it was completely adapted to life in the sea. you can see both behind and

forelimbs turned to do paddles and it had this tail force coming and we have now much better from other parts of the world. the skin impressions found out actually had the tail fin as well. so titanosaurus really sort of the biggest of and baddest of all these mosasaur as we know that mosasaurs were ferocious predators. in fact, the specimen of museum shows this nicely because there's a gut content here which the they said remains of a small relative of mozart's already it's they must have been in the stomach for some time after predation marsh also had another great find namely very odd crushed which he very quickly figured out belonged to a flying reptile pterodactyl. and these were the first signs of such animals in north america. pterodactyls were first discovered from southern germany, and then later on they were found in england and france. but these new pterodactyls from

kansas were in a class of their own were huge. this pteranodon contain wingspan of at least 20 feet and they were also different from the european pterodactyls that they had. these long beaks without any teeth. so ones have all teeth and are suitable only for fish catching fish eating. so this was a great hit of course. such a huge flying creature was something that nobody had anticipated. around the same time, koepka at some bones of such a clinch as well, of course, to give a different name, but matches discovery scary to date. and the jokes questions are still among the nicest that have ever been so tyrannical. it's now known from over a thousand specimens. and so we know what males and females look like we have bones of young individuals also interesting that almost 99% of all pteranodon belong to adults.

cope had also some good hits. here's another mosasaur smaller. the one that's much discovered called tedeschi's. it again has all the same features, but it's much smaller. this is an animal that probably got 15 to 20 feet in length, but coco had the good luck of recruiting a collector named charles z sternberg. they turned back of the orange. you can also from your england and charles cecilia's was this how good of an entire dynasty of extraordinary fossil collectors? the last one only passed away, 1968, and they made enormous contributions to the collections of many north american and european museums and of the sternberg son sons son of sons of charles also became investigators their own right and described many new of dinosaurs, particularly from western canada. so sternberg was very loyal to

cope and he thought the pope was kind of a fun guy. we did a lot of field work together, so unlike marsh actually kept going out in the field and he loved rough and tumble of fieldwork. even nowadays, it's not everyone's cup of to live in a tent and no go out into nature for various bodily obligations and so but sternberg and pope got on famously and in fact sternberg later on published a two volume autobiography in which he recounts many of his adventures with, what he called the professor. so kansas after wyoming, another battle ground evolved. and that was in the colorado territory, the colorado territory is very rich in fossils and in the region, just south of denver, people started finding fossil bones of enormous size from rocks that were dated.

the dressing and this where marsh first got in because some of the collectors immediately contacted him because they had heard that he paid very handsomely and wanted get in touch with them. the first one was an english expatriate, o.w. marcus, who actually left us this nice watercolor of one of the dinosaur court quarries that he worked on with another volunteer. these gentlemen worked the year even on the house with conditions to excavate these enormous phones, which was really difficult in a time we had no jackhammers and things like that everything had to be chiseled out of. the very hard sandstone. and this was the area we found the great jurassic dinosaur graveyards, which are still one of the great natural history attractions of the american west on the right and show you a picture what such bones looked like in the rock. there's this huge exposed cliff face at dinosaur national

monument, and you can see here enormous leg bones, vertebrae, ribs and their exposed in a cliff face that is almost vertical and was exposed to basically shoulders for bones visitors after a number of specimens had been removed for scientific. so you can actually with special permission rappelled down from the top there and look at the individual skeletons. it's quite a quite an interesting adventure and it's something that i would recommend that you can. it's now managed by the national paxton's so much immediately jumped on these discoveries. and see the paper which talks about various other fossil groups and then see notice of the new and gigantic event. this animal titanosaurs montana's. well, it wasn't titanic as titanosaurs had previously been described so much younger. geological rocks india and was only known to tail vertebrae

when marsh actually for information on the indian machu you realize that this was something different and he called it event resource montana's and thus began a very complicated development terms of biological nomenclature. you named atlanta strauss, montana. then he named another brontosaurus excelsis. another one became the paddle source. another one became diplodocus, and over recent, over decades since, marsh's work people have been going back and forth. you have probably heard from some four year olds that brontosaurus no longer a developed name, that it's in a of source. but in fact the study shows that brontosaurus is probably quite different from apatosaurus. also that closely related i'm showing you this picture here of brontosaurus excelsis because it was the first ever published scientific reconstruction of a

dinosaur skull. marsh got the skull wrong on this, but this was something that was not really realized until 100 years later when actually fitting skull was found that among the material this was the excuse of an arrow because all of these bones were scattered around and took a great deal of figuring out what was what and since there wasn't really any good what skull would go with the rest of the skeleton. this is an understandable mistake and nobody made a big deal of the but also found other fantastic dinosaur specimens is a specimen that we were fortunate to get at our museum. this is the holotype of the famous stirrups. you can see this huge roughly triangular armor plates on its back. can see much of the vertebrate columns. you see impressions of skin at the far end. you see this figure projected down is the skull and right next to it, right left to it you see a bunch of tiny sort of round

structures that were all of this animal. animal was amazingly heavily armed because two sets of two pairs of spikes end of its tail. so it lived in a world with a lot of natural dinosaurs. and this hammerschlag has gotten quite a good defensive use out of these very structures structures. now, marsh, as i said, was going from success to success. and marsh was had one personal property that was very helpful. he was a really excellent network and he very early on told lots of friends in high places probably saw his peabody but also because he was involved in the formation of key scientific bodies in the united states such as the national academy of sciences and so being in washington met all kinds of interesting people. he first met plans. king was an early director of the united states geological

survey and he got on well with but the real success connection was with king's successor, john wesley powell. a civil war hero was the first to actually both take a boat on the canyon and was already a noted explorer when. he was appointed the director of the us geological survey. so this two gentlemen got on famously and powell proposed to hire marsh as the official paleontology of united states geological group and because the survey was linked at time with the smithsonian, he also became an honorary curator at the united states national museum, which is the institution a precursor of our present day natural history museum. what during his last field trip in, wyoming had also become an intern involved in national politics. he had seen the absolutely

scandalous treatment of lakota so in the wyoming territory by the local indian agents who gave sioux shorty blankets negative meets poor rifles that would often blow up on the person trying to shoot them. and he made this public fact. he went to the president and actually got a hearing this and this led to a major of a reorg his nation of the indian agency system. the response people were fired in some cases. of course, you see here underneath paper where this transaction was going on and the good professor's appearing a palisade fence to see what's going on there and see very depressed lakota wandering off. lesson one, sitting in on the right and seems to be crying. and this intervention on behalf of the lakota got marsh in extremely good graces with the lakota and in 1883, chief red

cloud, the most prominent leader, actually this marsh for a few days in new haven. and you can see here giving a wampum ceremony, a belt and a piece pipe to and from then on marsh head and his collectors had no problem working lakota and seal territory because you know we had excellent relationships and red cloth throughout his life would contact marsh when he needed somebody to help in washington or sometimes marsh got all bit tired of this because he sometimes wanted things that even marsh was all of contacts could not help with. another huge success of marsh's was that in the material that had collected in wyoming and then later on his collectors, he discovered they could trace an entire evolutionary transition from the earliest horses here in the eocene, which roughly 45 to

50 million years ago, all the way the present day horse, you go animals that have multiple toes on both the hand and foot to our present day, which has only single digit on both the forefoot enhancement and some of the bones, the forearm and shin also get changed enough changes in the structure, the teeth you see at the bottom that you'll see a sort of have rounded locusts and basins was the teeth of a modern, a very deep crohn's and also very complicated pattern of sharp enamel ridges. this is related to the fact that these animals were undergoing changes in their environment the eocene ones were living in essentially subtropical to rainfall settings was. the more modern horses open they evolve to live in open which started in america about 20, 25 million years ago.

and in those grasslands that was a premium on very fast locomotion and, the reduction of the foot into the sort of single structure. and you needed very tall teeth because have only one change of teeth. and since horses feed predominantly on which contain a lot of silica, they had to come up with some way to prevent tooth being obliterated and already very young age. so modern horses clearly had much stronger lifespans than the earlier ones that were just beginning to evolve. that kind of marshaled these fossils towards a visiting scientist from england, thomas henry huxley, who's best known as darwin's most eloquent defender and was also a very good paleontologist and anatomist in his own right. and huxley was, so impressed because here was an evolutionary transition just darwin had to predict, but nobody had ever worked it out in such detail for

any group animals then. so after he visited with marsh, drew whole little cartoon here within hippasus the earliest horse you can see was many fingers and toes and being written by an early human which he called --. another huge successful mass again one that supported darwin's ideas and marsh was a further adherent of darwin's idea. the theory of evolution by natural selection was the discovery two birds and. this was something that people were just really stunned by. if you look at the skeleton on the left side, the reconstructions, see, this is very sort of look like creature has a long snout and but you see the big is actually with long teeth and. it has no wing. in fact, it turns there's a skeleton on the right, which is

from our exhibits that you can see was a foot propelled diving bird that was very in the great seaway that covered the american continent. so he was an animal that was basically a bird already, but it had a skull with lots with a beak that had lots of teeth in it. so this animal didn't have the kind of beak that modern have which is made of keratin the same material that our males has made of, but there was more than one bird. there was a second bird which this and this was a bird that actually had a wing. and you can also see a very large breastbone. so it's clearly an active but looks in many ways much similar to some of the present loons groups and so on. but on, right. you can see a skull reconstruction again. we'll see jaws, the upper and lower jaws have a set of small cutting teeth.

in fact, this was sort unusual that into the 1950s people were wondering these toothed were actually really part or whether they had been sort of mixed in some kind of fossil assemblage. but more recent studies like this reconstructions are based on scanning of some specimen that have been found since marsh's time. and they clearly established that this was an that was beginning to develop a bird at the front of the beak, a bird beak at the front of the beak. and then it still had teeth behind. and eventually we know some other fossils now, particularly from china, that this was a gradual transition. the birds got rid of teeth and develop the whole beak. and it's interesting that even now you can induce bird embryos by some embryo. let's remember, manipulation to actually grow little teeth or to spots these. so of course, cope was kind of distressed by all the successes

is imminent collagen you haven that and sort of try to keep up with it he too to the colorado territory and he too had collectors find giants dinosaurs for him and he's a dinosaur named camera source he has the as it was originally laid out in the national museum of natural history and it's sort of disposed and we now have for the new exhibit edit we mounted in a much more lifelike pose which actually up on its hind legs to crop on leaves in the top of the tree. so he had one of those the other kinds that he described of dinosaurs turned out to be the same as some of the species. as marsh described, or species that to the state, not certain whether they are valid. but his biggest accomplishment was what is generally known as bible in math of tome describing

the vertebrate and the tertiary that is all of the walks after the extinction of the dinosaurs other than birds which he published in 1884. and this monograph is just a monograph of superlatives. over a thousand pages thick, six beautiful plates. and in fact, my copy i just recently measured this is six inches thick mean this is a real doorstop. but this also it described an amazing variety of mammals, turtles early crocodiles, lizards, snakes you it but particularly mammals. and he is one of the mammals that i you earlier peripheral isn't lower this animal is shown in one of these beautiful lithographs. however, while the struggle was going on, you could get the coolest fossils, the most interesting stuff. there were some prints on the

ground so thought, gee, if these guys out and can do this, i mean, the yale and the guy from philadelphia surely a bunch of princetonian could easily keep up with this and so they organized their own little expedition they went to court for help because marshall reputation as being superbly unhelpful individual to students and so the talk called at first court was quite suspicious when it told them where they wanted to collect you said, oh, i don't think you should go there because i think i've already gotten that was there. but they persisted and over time culture became friendly with them and for the rest of cope's life, he became close friends, two of them, henry osborn and william berryman, became very prominent with paleontology. the own. i'll talk more about osborn later, but william scott graduated from princeton went to germany a fee and then spent the of his academic career being a

professor at princeton university and became one of the foremost students of fossil mammals in his state. now, at some, the conflict had come to point where it was inevitable that something dramatic, this idea, the catastrophe theory were parameters change and they hit the critical point and then something very radical happens and what happened was that i already mentioned that marsh had become the official paleontologist for the united states geological survey and was handsomely supported by the survey, both for his field collectors, but also for all of the work in his lab by technicians craftsmen and so on. but marsh apparently project was told to contact secretary of interior at the time and has the

secretary of the interior send a letter to cope demanding that all of the that cope had collected going along with hayden and other early service bittorrent to the national museum. and that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back just blew up and he was thinking like, what can i do about i clearly have to make sure that this marsh and pesky associates come a bitter end. and he found a receptive audience in a journalist named william hosea ballou, who worked for the new york herald. the new york herald was a bit of a sort of tabloid in those they have been founded by j.g. bennett junior, a very notorious figure in those days. he was famous for behaving totally inappropriate social events, but he was also great sailor. so he would go into the qualify

for various regattas, generally sort of a man about town. but he was at one point created such a scandal with this prospective fiancee, he had to decamp for a while to great britain before he could quite sneak back into the new york social. but ballou was rather indistinct. undistinguished individual, both as a journalist and as a person. got cope's and told him what had happened and to move with sense for a good story sort of kept to cope. and then as had written up stuff, sent it to marsh to get marsh to ply and this the actual what public thinks of was in the new york herald in general. of 1890. you see he had sort of a collage of clippings it was professor cope charges year professor picks up the gantlet and so on and so forth accused each other

of in academic crime and of regular crime. the son and this was quite horrifying to other academics academics even though infighting in academia has always and always will be heavy. this was something you didn't you didn't want to sort sort of basically air your laundry public. and so these two gentlemen in it instantly became famous, which are quite a part of the american public. now, the result of this, you're just sort of another and quote from cope the facts are well known a man wants pursue a scientific career, finding the labels doing so and the solution the questions involved in conveying difficulty employs a number of assistants. it turns out these assistants are not only to do mechanical cleric work necessary to the

pursuit of ritual research like an ultra perform the research itself and to commit the results to paper the manuscript that's obtained is issued by a reputable scientific journal and by the united states unit. so this is the of the imperial physicist since its name appearing on the title page and credit for authorship of the published contents being assumed by him a very nasty assertion, but as we'll find out not entirely. the two men cope. it must were obviously very different personnel. cope was always sort of described as a fiery character, quickly found offense and even would beat up his best friends. but people like because he was very entertaining. it's very nice thing and apparently he was also quite a ladies man. so get that segment of the populace covered was smash was a

very sort of quite somewhat suspicious guy would only tell you what he thought you should know, but not necessarily what you really should know. and so he worked very differently. cope had only a single assistant who prepared fossils for him was marsh, had a huge laboratory full of people who were assisting you had people preparing fossils. you had people that would do some beautiful drawings that were then printed this lithographs. and so had a huge operation. so he was basically the captain of the small company, was cope, was basically a lone wolf was very little assistance of any kind. and this body often systems of marshes proved to be a wonderful set of allies for cope in its fight in the new york herald, he had of previously interacted with some of and he knew that

they were very unhappy in marshes flat there were multiple first of all marsh prohibited them from working on anything to do with fossil vertebrates including groups that he had absolutely no interest in. and this particularly strange because of all of the gentlemen illustrated here had excellent educations undergrad degrees in some cases only doctorate degrees in case of power. on the left came from germany. but he also was terrible about paying people. he would only pay people when they were basically in extremis. and even then would only give them partial payment. and this particularly affected george gilboa from germany within great with his family and was constantly in financial dire straits and so he became very dependent on loans for marsh in instead of actually salary now

all of these men were chafing under marsh but were doing this work in schools and it suited that some of greatest monographs were in fact not written by that, were written by one or sent. so here for instance, you know, barlow established that the monograph on you intersperse us was written by oscar harvey in most parts and that he some theoretical discussion to oscar haaga and possibly samuel willis also wrote much according to paul and kingsley, barber wrote much of famous monograph on the two books. so if this was true, this was really academic hijinx of the most extreme form, unfortunately. hoggart died very young and bower, after being finally fed up with marsh. and i think part most of the students relocated to clark university in massachusetts and then got a professorship at

unisa's chicago, which at that time was a new institution. but between his really heavy bavarian accent, his extremely nervous personality wasn't exactly a great success with the students there. but he continued to publish quite a bit on mostly present day animals, anatomy, reptiles of mammals and so on. but at some point you just tore it all down and relocated to germany or or came from munich. he went back to munich, but that his psychological issue deteriorated to such an extent he had to be committed to asylum where he died very soon. barbara and wallace went on to be very successful. paleontologists in their own right. wallace as the assistant, had actually already done a lot of work in kansas, a field collector, and helped collect some of the great jurassic

dinosaurs. but because marsh wouldn't let him work on any fossils, he decided to study flies and he became the leading and even to the state leading authority on north american prize writing, extensive monographs on them and on, plus your medical and actually for a while served on the connecticut board public health barber got a graduate to be at and then in in geology and then moved ultimately to usc nebraska and he established these fantastic collections of late tertiary mammals. now grace the nebraska state museum in lincoln. if you ever have a chance to go there, that is fantastic. rose of the evolution of elephants in north america. the evolution of camels and all of this stuff was basically the work of baba and his wife, whom he always generously credited. unlike other people in those days, wallace went from success to success, was first a professor and then dean at

kansas, and ultimately became the professor of anthropology in chicago, where he worked and, lived until he died in 1918 at a very relatively young age. so gentlemen, all contributed written testimonials probably, the most thrilling of which was the one by who, who at that point had really already dissociated himself from marsh, but also the rather successful, but then claimed that he had never authorized its publication and even sort of tried to backpedal since he was still officially employed by marsh. so another important lesson was gentleman henry fairfield osborn, who we had first met as one of the members of the princeton field party in the early days osborn had gone on to be a professor at princeton and then became the curator of paleontology and ultimately of

the american museum natural history in new york and was the man who turned this museum into the great institution that it's now, along with our museum, really the foremost natural history museum in the united states. and one of the leading once in the world, osborn, came from a very prominent family. his father was president of the illinois railroad. you had also a lot of money on other sides. pierpont morgan was one of his uncles. and so marriage was also related to some the peabody's. and so he was a person of wealth of an education that we figured that wealthy background and he basically was another person very much like marsh except that a bit of field work himself but later on he also would sort of rely on his colleagues to write many of his papers but he became a great museum man. he was a person who named the famous t-rex and many other important things on downside, he

was one of america's leading eugenicists in the 2730s and wrote prefaces for some of the most hateful, racist, racist that were published during this time. so a very mixed bag and they did live he died in 1975 he actually was excited about hitler's germany and he wrote an article about it in german magazine, which i never hesitate to copy. my colleagues at the american museum to sort of see see where he praised the fuhrer and all the bright youth in germany that were going to turn the world around. little did he know what was going to happen, but what was the aftermath of all this? neither cope nor scored a victory. however, things happened. marsh his post as the us geological survey paleontologist and all federal funding for field work after john wesley powell was fired as director of the us geological.

so some members of congress had already been unhappy paul because paul was voting that the development in the west was being completely divorced from the availability of resources an issue that has once again come to the fore quite recently in places like arizona and the pro-development members of congress had no interest in having somebody spout such wisdom to the general public. so they were happy to have a pretext to, firepower. now, with the disappearance of federal funding and having spent so much of his private money, he basically was broke and he had to ask for actually did receive a salary professorship but he also mortage home to yale and that's how they became national coal had lost most of his fortune personal fortune in bad investments he had been tricked into heavily investing in silver mines in new and arizona and.

they just none of them panned out and even though he had some geological background he had been just fooled with fake samples of silver for and he was in very dire financial straits and he actually was forced to sell much of his collection to henry fairfield osborn at the american museum of. natural history. however, one good thing that happened to him was that finally gave him the proper paid academic position and was appointed chair of anatomy after joseph lightly had passed away. however, he did have to mortage one of his two townhouses in philadelphia on pine street and had to rent the other one. so he lived in the mortgage fund a through salary, not enough money to cover basic living expenses at his mortage payments on 21 or two pine street marsh and cope continued to actively search however because he had so many data so they could just sit down and write papers and might

actually produce arguably his most widely known work, the dinosaurs of north america, which was published in 1896. and this lists all of dinosaurs that he had and some so derived theory comments of discoveries, but it included excellent illustrations of all of them and more importantly, it showed the first true reconstructions for a great variety of dinosaurs and until the 1960s. these reconstruct where we produced in every book on dinosaurs popular, scientific textbook and so on so this was really a big for him another interesting thing was that he kept finding cool stuff. in 1887, he described a set of forms that had been found not far from denver as bison, as cornerstone bison. now, this is very looking if you have ever looked at a bison skull, it doesn't really look

very much like bison skull. i'm sitting here next to what this does, anything like this. however, he couldn't figure out what else could be. so called bison. a few years later, one of his you collect this woman to use in a moment found this fat magnificent skull of what triceratops? the three horned dinosaur with horns over each eye and a or the tip of the snout of its nose. and this large bony frill at the back of the skull. so here was an entirely new type of dinosaur, the horned dinosaur. and they turned out to be incredibly diverse and abundant in north america. if you are known from east asia as basically a large north american living in to the state, people keep finding in the cretaceous formations of the western interior, new species of these kinds of dinosaurs. this was all due to an incredibly talented collector that must recruited named john

bell. hatch. he worked for marsh for the rest of marsh's face. and then later on first moved to princeton as a connector when he conducted a huge one person expedition to patagonia, which he not only collected fossils, but he also helped finance himself by being an east player. as a famous story, he left argentina. he had to do by walking backwards to a with two six shooters pointed at a very irate local village population whom he had completely cleansed of any funds that they had through his poker skills. so a very resourceful man. he went on ultimately to become curator at the carnegie museum pittsburgh, but unfortunately died very early on of the typhoid before he could complete a lot important scientific studies. however, big monograph that marsh had studied he completed that was a big monograph on the

horned dinosaurs which to this day is a classic analysis of most of his connections to yale and for a long time he was very to give the ones that had collected government funds to the smithsonian and he had sort of a rather sort of half baked defense. however, charles doolittle walcott, who had moved from being the director of. the question of soviet to being the secretary of the smithsonian and director of the then us national museum was after these bones like the devil was after some souls and quickly as soon as marsh died in 1899, had people rushed to haven and grabbed everything that had been collected with us geological survey funds and this was the foundation of a collection of fossil vertebrates, which was then augmented by people that came into later on. but so much of what we have in terms of the historical was due

to the efforts. marsh albeit with federal funds, cope's last years were spent in the stone houses in pine street in philadelphia. there's a picture of him sitting in a study with a dinosaur bone right next to him a human skull sitting there in the back, you see the skull of, an extinct amphibian. the first is right around this time was basically a lonely guy. his wife and daughter had left him. it's not quite clear what precipitated that some people related to his apparent womanizing in the early years, but it was probably more financially caused because, as is said, he was in dire financial straits. he quite active. he described dinosaur, this beautiful of the duckbill dinosaur called i claudius. it's now not the source you describe. what was the first record of a t-rex? but he didn't recognize it because he just had a poorly preserved, huge vertebra, which

are called metal sponges. in his last years. got money from the texas geological survey to work in texas and he found a whole host of new fossil vertebrates. some a variety of geological formations. texas is very rich in a fossil record of vertebrates, and so had the famous demeter on the sail, the precursor of mammals, an argentinian aerial. these were all things that cope discover just last known picture of cope. he was elected president of the american association for the advancement of science in 1895, and this is from the 1896 meeting. you see, we're holding his hat and after he died and his house ultimately became, as you see, a national landmark, probably he died of some kind of infection with possibly the kidneys. he had also serious prostate problems, which in those days could really not be effectively

addressed if that was surgery available, it limits to impotence. and of course, somebody like cope who was very interested in the female sex would not have countenance this possible so he died alone on his own accord in in his study and then had a quaker funeral. but he had left his body to science. so he left body to the university of pennsylvania for the medical students to dissect. but he had also this peculiar it was one along with a lady who wanted to prove that a superior was related to unusually large brain size. so they left the skulls and brains to in your anatomist by the name of swpix.com, who analyzed the great, the great and famous of those days in the scientific world in terms brain volume. and it turns out that cope's volume was a little bit higher than. the average for caucasian male in those days.

he had hoped that marsh would follow him so that he could show the world that marsh's brain was, in fact, smaller than this. but marsh opted for a more traditional burial, and his grave is still in the graveyard. in new haven, there's a prominent plaque it, and he's sort of, as himself preserved for eternity. cope's eventually ended up with some pennsylvania with the rest of his, and this became very interesting because a lot of people claimed that he had died of syphilis, yet careful medical examination by several specialists of his bones revealed no evidence that this ever happened because, of course, tertiary syphilis texas skeleton and his bones fine. so no trace of it. he just showed some degenerative changes that we all saw in our now, why the questions people always ask is one. well, it was marsh but in terms of dinosaurs over in terms of other animals cope was way ahead

because cope not only described fossil of all groups but he studied modern fishes from the united states. he studied salamanders, lizards and turtles. and in fact, some of the common species that we still live today are named. well, each of the names described by cope, so called published over 1400 papers. unfortunately, they included some sort of weird commentaries on social, which has been justly as very racist and very sexist. not surprising. the late 19th century. but in this eight in this day and age, she has been sort of censured by a great many organizations and effective major journal named after him copyright was we we baptized because people thought it should not honor a racist and sexist but did not subject to such stuff. he published about 400 papers and again, whether he wrote them all or not, it's an open

question. but certainly both men, even though their struggle was bizarre and for outside is totally incomprehensible. they are among the three fathers of pathology. also friday being the first in the center and marsh cope on either side. lady as i mentioned dropped out of of anthology but as cope and marsh were the waning years he decided to get in and he described a lot of these fossil vertebrates that had been found in florida in age deposits and slightly older deposits. so back in his late in life before he away in 1891 he actually went back to go to japan anthology, which was one of his first loves. so even though this is a really bizarre episode, the history of american and paleontologists included. i've had occasion to work with these specimens.

these gentlemen collected and described, and it's kind of to see specimens that have labels labeled the handwriting. and i'm very fortunate that for all of them are also have inscribed copies of the scientific publications that i've gotten on that record market. so i'm very happy to be a remote offspring of these three researchers controversialist may have been thank you. thank you, hans. and we are so glad to have you as part of the smithsonian as well. thank you so much for your fascinating talk on the bone wars and hope and marsh and thank to everyone who has already submitted your questions into the q&a box. your screen. please do feel free to continue to add them during q&a session. but let's get some of the questions that have come in. so a really great first question that came in here is how often did coop and marsh see each

other in person? or it was there were primarily fought via newspapers and academic texts. well, they actually would go to all of the same meetings. they were both members of the national academy of sciences. they would go to meetings of american association for the advancement of science. so they couldn't really avoid each other. and actually marsh would occasionally travel down to philadelphia to listen to cope's talks. one case after cope had found very interesting new kinds of fossils. new mexico marsh during the talk, remembered that one of his collectors had sent him stuff from there and he had not paid any attention it. so he quickly exited respect to hayes and tried to beat cop into print, which he did it made a terrible mess of things but so he actually managed to get one or two new names out there through his efforts. so they didn't need each other. but i'm sure they sort of would have of walked around each other like two cats whose need for the

study. thank you. hunt's next is any family connection between george perkins the 19th century environmental ists of woodstock, vermont, perchance, too, marsh and? possibly. if i heard this, i have not actually established that would have to check the genealogy so whether that's the case. marsh himself had no children. he was, even though he liked women, he was never romantically involved. and so he was like the brits probably called a confirmed bachelor bachelor. great to know. thank you, hans, for our next question. the bones of the early tooth. birds hollow. yes. they were just like bird bones. actually, the bones of the terrible are also hollow because it's very important for an animal that flies to have as little body weight as possible and also both in the tooth and

in the pterodactyls, just like in modern birds. they had a very complicated respiratory system where the lungs have little effects and those air sacs often invade the adjacent bones that she filled the bones. this also true in some dinosaurs like t-rex has hollow bones. thank you, hans. next question. do you what do you think of the valuation of the vertebrate skeletons and sale of them to private collectors, of which you had referenced in your talk. it seems the problem started the late 19th century and it's not a new problem here. no, it's an ancient problem, long paleontology even existed as a science, particularly in europe. people would collect fossils and sell them to private individuals usually either very individuals or nobility. nobility. and there was this thing, the wunderkammer, which was the sort

of precursor of museums where people would display things from nature or from arkansas. so fossils sold on a very large scale even back then, sometimes faked little bit so that they would get even better prices. so this is something that has been thrown around long before paleontology first came into being at the very beginning of the 19th century and. it's still a big issue here north, america. people tend to be very orthodox it. most of my colleagues. absolutely hate commercial collectors. but since i had my early days in europe and i started out as a private collector, i've always well, with private collectors, both in europe and north america. and this has been a very good relationship. i've gotten wonderful donations from them. i have helped them. and, you know, i've gotten some interesting research project offers. and i think that as long as people collect legally, they all of the permits can show that they have in the case of

property property owners written permission. this is all aboveboard. there's unfortunate bit of speculation and this sort of driven up the prices for dinosaurs since the t-rex skeleton was sold for $8.8 million. and now farmer out west thinks that he is the next t-rex. and actually, us researchers, it has become very to go on many private to say like what's in it for me financially. so and we don't have the money and be we shouldn't be paying for field research. wonderful. thank you, hans. was there a feud? hatcher and barnum during field collections? not really, because they didn't really extensively overlap. they knew each other, but they didn't have much a feud. i don't think there were necessarily because particularly in wyoming, they were pretty much working the same areas full time. but i don't think hatcher never sort of wrote nasty about brown.

and i've never seen it. and also the carnegie museum. i looked at some of hudson's correspondence and i never saw anything negative from bob brown. or any of the bone still in active use today that were under the supervision of coleman marsh as some of them still exist. but they have been the has been continues exploration. so in most cases you would at most sort of dip in the hill or, the hole in the ground that is partially filled in. so also both, copper and marsh kept a lot of their sites very secret. and so we briefly know where they were. we have never been actually sort of put a needle on the map that this was the place. but there's place that i just visited last summer called coble bluff in wyoming and tacoma bluff was first worked by marsh's collectors, then later by the wyoming. and more recently, one of my

colleagues here at the smithsonian as well to look for jurassic vertebrate fossils. and so that's it's a ridge. so there are a number of little quarries. that's fantastic to make that there. thank you. yeah. oh, well, in terms of the excavation of, these fossils were any damaged as, a result of the rivalry between cope and marsh in transportation or their workers fossils were generally damaged a lot in those days because the technique that we now which is to encase block of rock with fossils in plaster bandages separate it by some kind of tissue. that was a technology that didn't until very late. george stern but the collector work for coal was one of the first ones. we tried to use birds strips done soaked in flour in water and make bandages out of it. and that was pretty well. but a lot of the fossils got

terribly damaged because first the technology for getting an ultrasound didn't exist. they had no rock source with diamond blades that no jackhammers all those kinds of things. and you didn't know they didn't know how to conserve, you know, now in the early 20th century, they started using shellac and now we use that can be applied that stabilized the fossils. but then in the lab you can remove them and use other stuff that has longer archival life because a lot of the old glues including the old plaster breaks they had in those days, they're coming apart. we had to repair lot of marsh specimens in our collection because these huge wounds would crack their own weight along the plasticine, so we had to completely clean them up and then replace them and no time to build extra seconds. in fact, pioneered the technique for. well, congratulations you were for future paleobiologist.

i know it's not widely used, actually in my german colleagues. you say. fantastic for. our next question here did did you cope with marsh, how did they explain extinction in their findings? marsh no problem. with that, cope had a very strange on evolution. he a neo lamarckian. so you went back to lamarck. so he basically did not accept that natural selection was a major factor. he thought that animals had some sort of sort of, as the french would call it, allow we called it so an internal force that growth change it was marsh was very much into natural selection neither of them ever spoke much about extinction sort of accepted that extinction happened that's basically like most biologists we know that most things that have existed are and you know, extinction just like origination of species

is basically a fact of life in. those days i didn't have any ideas how these extinctions came about. so thank you, hans. and we have time for two more questions here. did coach or marsh know about mary anning and her discoveries? england oh yeah. barry anning's discoveries were well publicized and so they note they knew about them. in fact, when marsh was in england to actually visited lyme regis, the town where mary lived and was looking for fossils that she could take back to yale and are lots of even today there are lots of little shops that sell fossils fossils. the coastline itself is now under protection. thank you, hon. and now for our final question, how would you that cope? and marsh found are valid species today? that's very hard to say. i mean, both of the described

hundreds of species in some cases. so it was list of dinosaurs like for marshes that were listed there. maybe a third turn out valid cope generally did poorly on the dinosaurs, but you did really well on the mammals so you describe not small mammals and mustards and also other kinds of fish. for instance, cope was mixed in fossils fishes. so describe scores of species. they're and even some of the species said propose for living fishes and amphibians and reptiles in the united states are still valid. so they both an enormous legacy which in vertebrate biology. nobody's going to match it anytime soon. so if ever and a little more of a fun based question, if you were at the end the late 19th century, who would you sided with? cope i most paleontologist would have sided with cope despite all

of the sort of unsavory political and social comments, because cope was a lively individual. he was a real thinker. he wrote broadly, even as papers describing fossils. he thinks them was marsh was, just like he was generally stolid. he was very stalwart in his account. so except when people are and so on would actually attempt biological interpretation. so no defining people would have been a much more fun individual to hang out with, which in in the earth sciences is always very very fantastic. and just a little end question here. anyone look to visit either the national museum, natural history or the american of natural history? can you tell us a little bit about these two museums and which museums have more viewing fossils view and what you see

there since it seems like do have knowledge of both. yeah well the american museum if you two dinosaurs the american museum of natural history has more great exhibits because they have somewhat the the sort of wheel gold gold coins of dinosaur exhibits and in many other groups as well. our museum has way larger collections. we have paleontology alone. we have over 40 million accessions specimens and anything from single celled to fossil whale. so i think in terms of paleontology, we have much than the americans left received, but i must say that the exhibits at the american museum of let's see, i personally find more interesting slipups. i hate to say it for you to know and there are just a quick train ride away from each in new york. exactly. yeah. and i recommend if anyone hasn't been to the national museum of natural history and haven't seen

the the new dinosaur exhibits. absolutely. it is worth a visit for sure. yeah. no, all our dinosaurs are based. really. the latest science we have, we have done things with dinosaur said no other museum. we have for instance does big predatory dinosaur that most of us called allosaurus and assaults and all these things and we have mounted it's sitting because one of our researchers discovered the insect nest of its eggs we know there were its eggs because that tiny ourselves bones so we we did something that nobody has ever done one of those predator dinosaurs actually down like a big bird and other things like that so so in in some way our exhibits are more dynamic than anything else out there. benton tastic thank you so much, hans. unfortunately, that is all that we have time for tonight. we had some really great questions that spurred a