Tyrannosaurus Sue-- The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found

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Tyrannosaurus Sue-- The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found Page 15

by Steve Fiffer


  pushed him to use the m o n e y to attend Phillips Academy at Andover,

  9 2 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E

  Massachusetts. Marsh wasn't terribly interested in going to school, but

  he was anxious to endear himself to his uncle George Peabody, who had

  m a d e a fortune in business and n o w lived in London. Peabody was gen-

  erous to relatives w h o showed pluck.

  To demonstrate his pluck, Marsh enrolled at Andover as a 20-year-old

  freshman, some seven years older than most of his classmates. He drifted

  through his first year. Then, impelled to reconsider his life after his 22-

  year-old sister died in childbirth, he dedicated himself to his studies.

  After graduating from Andover as class valedictorian, Marsh entered

  Yale with his uncle's financial support. While there, he spent m u c h of his

  free time on fossil-hunting field trips. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa in

  1860, he entered Yale's Sheffield Scientific School for graduate study. The

  following year, at age 30, he published his first paper, a look at the gold

  fields of Nova Scotia. His second paper m a d e a splash. After Louis

  Agassiz, the world's leading authority on fossil fishes, misidentified a

  specimen, Marsh wrote an article correctly refuting him.

  By the time Marsh refuted Cope's restoration eight years later, the

  two m e n had published m a n y m o r e papers and distinguished them-

  selves in the scientific community. In 1860, the 20-year-old Cope stud-

  ied comparative anatomy with Leidy at the University of Pennsylvania

  a n d recatalogued the Academy of Natural Sciences' herpetological col-

  lection. Over the next two years, he wrote 22 papers. In 1863, his Quaker

  father, hoping to keep h i m out of the Civil War, sent h i m to Europe to

  continue his education.

  In Germany, Cope met Marsh, w h o was studying at the University

  of Berlin. Marsh later wrote: " D u r i n g the next five years, I saw him often

  and retained friendly relations with him, although at times his eccen-

  tricities of conduct, to use no stronger term, were hard to bear. These I

  forgave until the n u m b e r was approaching nearly the Biblical limit of

  seventy times seven."

  Cope's conduct was indeed eccentric. He suffered severe bouts of

  melancholy. He also engaged in whirlwind spurts of activity bordering

  on the manic. After returning to America in 1864, he wrote n u m e r o u s

  scientific papers, including 26 in 1868 alone. By this time he had mar-

  ried, had a child, taught at Haverford College, resigned his professor-

  ship, h u n t e d fossils in Maryland and N o r t h Carolina, and moved to

  Haddonfield, New Jersey.

  W H O O W N S S U E ? 9 3

  Haddonfield, h o m e of Hadrosaurus foulkei, was rich in fossil beds.

  Cope found "seven huge Saurians" there in a short period of time,

  including an 18-foot leaping dinosaur that he called Laelaps aquilungus.

  W h e n Marsh learned of his friend's discovery in the spring of 1868, he

  went to Haddonfield. The two m e n spent a pleasant week together look-

  ing for mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, a n d dinosaurs.

  By this time Marsh had become America's first professor of paleon-

  tology, thanks largely to George Peabody. Marsh had convinced his rich

  uncle to endow a m u s e u m of natural history at Yale. There was no for-

  mal quid pro quo. Marsh had strong credentials for the post. But full

  professorships were usually given to older, m o r e experienced scholars.

  Shortly after h u n t i n g fossils with Cope in Haddonfield, Professor

  Marsh boarded the new Union Pacific Railroad and m a d e his first fos-

  sil-hunting trip in the West. In Antelope Station, Nebraska, he found the

  bones of an extinct three-toed horse that had stood only 3 feet high.

  "Research proved him to be a veritable missing link in the genealogy of

  the m o d e r n horse," Marsh later wrote. For the first time, the academic

  c o m m u n i t y took serious notice of him.

  The general c o m m u n i t y took notice the following year, when Marsh

  exposed a hoax. In 1868, an agnostic farmer from Binghamton, New

  York, had become fed up with Bible-thumping preachers w h o claimed

  there had been ancient giants. The farmer secretly hired a stone carver

  to create such a giant out of stone. He then added touches to make it

  look authentic and let it weather for a year before burying it near

  Syracuse. In October of 1869, he arranged for a friend to dig a well at

  the burial spot and find the p h o n y giant.

  Once unearthed, the "Cardiff Giant" became a national sensation.

  Fundamentalist preachers hailed the "fossilized h u m a n being" as proof

  that the scriptures were true. Esteemed scientists did not believe it to be

  a petrified h u m a n , but they nevertheless hailed it as the most remark-

  able archaeological artifact ever found in the United States.

  The creator sold a portion of his interest in the Giant for $30,000. It

  was moved to Syracuse, where upward of 3000 people a day paid to see

  it. Unable to buy the original, P. T. B a r n u m commissioned a copy a n d

  displayed it in a New York City m u s e u m , where it drew huge crowds.

  Enter Marsh, the longtime specialist in finding a n d exposing mis-

  takes. He immediately saw that the statue was m a d e of gypsum so solu-

  9 4

  TYRANNOSAURUS S U E

  ble that it could have survived only a few years u n d e r g r o u n d without

  dissolving. "The whole thing is a fraud," he p r o n o u n c e d , pleasing the

  perpetrator of the hoax b u t embarrassing the scientists and clergy w h o

  had been fooled.

  While Marsh was making a n a m e for himself, Cope was champing

  at the bit to get out West. Unlike Marsh he had neither an uncle n o r a

  university to fund the trip. Cope did, however, have a farm that his

  father had b o u g h t years earlier. Cope the elder agreed to sell the p r o p -

  erty to pay for a western expedition.

  Cope didn't make the expedition until the fall of 1871. Once past

  the Mississippi, he spent m u c h of his time in the Kansas chalk fields.

  There he joined forces with Charles H. Sternberg, a young fossil collec-

  tor w h o would soon make his o w n m a r k in the world of paleontology.

  Despite frequent gales and sandstorms, the d u o unearthed the largest

  sea turtle found to that date, an 8 0 0 - p o u n d fish that Cope named

  Portheus ("bulldog tarpon"), and a new mosasaur, Tylosaurus, that had

  jaws big enough to swallow Portheus. "I secured a large proportion of

  the extinct vertebrate species of Kansas, although Prof. Marsh had been

  there previously," Cope crowed.

  Marsh had been t h r o u g h m u c h of the West previously. In 1870, the

  professor and a group of 12 students from Yale spent almost six m o n t h s

  in Nebraska and Wyoming. They started in the s u m m e r at Fort

  McPherson in Nebraska, where they met Buffalo Bill Cody. Marsh and

  Cody became fast friends, a n d whenever Buffalo Bill took his show east,

  he visited Marsh's classes in New Haven.

  Escorted by the Fifth Cavalry, the Marsh party m o u n t e d Indian

  ponies taken in battle from the Cheyenne a n d headed for Wyoming.

&n
bsp; Riding 14 h o u r s a day, they faced hailstorms, swarms of mosquitoes,

  and prairie fires that the Sioux set to deter them. From Fort Bridger in

  southwest Wyoming, they set out for a legendary valley of huge petrified

  bones. They didn't find it, b u t they did find a b o n e yard rich with m a m -

  mal remains.

  Before heading back in December, Marsh shot a buffalo, discovered

  a mosasaur burial ground, and found a most unusual hollow bone. "The

  bird characters were there, but such a joint no k n o w n bird possessed, as

  it indicated a freedom of m o t i o n in o n e direction that no well-con-

  structed bird could use on land or water," Marsh wrote. He concluded

  W H O O W N S S U E ? 9 5

  that the bone had belonged to a giant pterodactyl, the flying reptile of

  Mesozoic times.

  The following year the professor discovered remains of the first

  birds to be recognized as having teeth. This led T h o m a s Huxley to write:

  "The discovery of the notched birds by Marsh completed the series of

  transitional forms between birds and reptiles and removed Mr. Darwin's

  proposition 'that many animal forms have been utterly lost' from the

  region of hypothesis to that of demonstrable fact."

  Relations between Marsh and Cope had grown strained in the years

  following Cope's mistaken reconstruction of the Elasmosaurus. Each

  took potshots at the other whenever possible. But it wasn't until 1872

  that war broke out between the two.

  Cope, w h o had attached himself to a U.S. D e p a r t m e n t of the

  Interior geological surveying party, triggered the hostilities by daring to

  invade Wyoming's Bridger Basin, which Marsh had been draining of

  fossils for two years. Problems immediately arose. Each side spied on the

  other. Marsh bribed telegraphers for news of Cope's finds. O n e of

  Cope's scouts regularly reported new discoveries to Marsh. And Cope

  paid Marsh's m e n to lead him to their leader's sites.

  Trickery was also c o m m o n . After observing Marsh's party leave a

  site empty-handed, Cope decided to try his luck there. He found a skull

  and loose teeth, leading h i m to describe a new species. Some time later,

  when he saw an identical skull with very different teeth, he realized he'd

  been fooled. Marsh's m e n had intentionally "salted" the site with the

  bones of two different species to mislead him into the embarrassing

  misidentifi cation.

  Nathan Reingold, author of Science in Nineteenth-Century America,

  describes Cope and Marsh as "robber barons trying to corner the old-

  bones market." D u r i n g their first years out west, the pair primarily

  found the old bones of m a m m a l s , fish, and lizards. Eventually, the bones

  and the stakes grew considerably larger.

  In 1877, Arthur Lakes, a teacher and part-time fossil collector,

  found some giant bones embedded in rock near the town of Morrison,

  Colorado. Western collectors knew what to do when they discovered a

  promising site: contact Marsh or Cope, each of w h o m was willing to pay

  for good fossils or good leads to fossils. Lakes sent Marsh a letter with

  sketches.

  9 6

  TYRANNOSAURUS S U E

  While waiting for a response, Lakes found many more bones. He

  sent boxes of these fossils to Marsh at Yale and Cope in Philadelphia for

  identification. Marsh responded first. He sent Lake a check for $100 and

  told him to keep the location of the find a secret. There were dinosaurs

  in t h e m thar hills. Marsh then published a paper on a new dinosaur,

  Titanosaurus montanus, "giant m o u n t a i n reptile." (After learning that

  this n a m e had already been used to describe a dinosaur found in India,

  Marsh changed the n a m e to Atlantosaurus, "Atlas reptile.")

  W h e n he learned that Lakes had also written Cope, Marsh sent his

  chief field collector to Colorado to make a deal with the teacher. Lakes

  subsequently wrote Cope and asked h i m to forward to Marsh the bones

  Lakes had previously sent to Philadelphia. Cope was angry at being best-

  ed by his rival, but he acquiesced. Marsh n a m e d these bones Apatosaurus

  ajax ("deceptive reptile").

  Soon the tables were turned. Cope received specimens from another

  teacher/collector in Colorado, O. W. Lucas. Cope identified them as the

  bones of a different dinosaur, an herbivore far m o r e spectacular than

  that found by Lakes. He n a m e d it Camarasaurus ("chambered reptile").

  Cope p r o m p t l y hired Lucas, w h o found other important remains

  for him. Hearing of this, Marsh sent his o w n people to the site to look

  for dinosaurs and woo Lucas to their camp. They failed to recruit Lucas

  b u t did find several excellent dinosaur skeletons at nearby Felch Quarry.

  In July 1877, Marsh received the following letter from Laramie,

  Wyoming:

  I write to a n n o u n c e you of the discovery . . . of a large n u m b e r

  of fossils, supposed to be those of Megatherium, although there

  is no one here sufficient of a geologist to state for a certainty.

  . . . We are desirous of disposing of what fossils we have, and

  also the secret of the others. We are working men and not able to

  present them as a gift, and if we can sell the secret of the fossil bed

  and secure work in excavating others we would like to do so.

  After a description of the bones, the letter concluded: "We would be

  pleased to hear from you, as you are well k n o w n as an enthusiastic geol-

  ogist and a m a n of means, both of which we are enthusiastic of find-

  i n g — m o r e especially the latter."

  W H O O W N S S U E ? 9 7

  T h e signers of the letter, w h o identified themselves as " H a r l o w

  a n d Edwards," sent a few fossil samples in g o o d faith. Realizing that

  these were d i n o s a u r b o n e s , Marsh sent the westerners a check for

  $75 and asked t h e m to keep digging. In a second letter, " H a r l o w a n d

  Edwards," w h o t u r n e d o u t to be railroad m e n n a m e d Reed a n d

  Carlin, noted that there were others in the area looking for b o n e s .

  Worried a b o u t losing o u t on the find, Marsh dispatched an emissary,

  Samuel Williston, to check o u t the site. Williston r e p o r t e d that this

  site, k n o w n as C o m o Bluff, was far superior to the C o l o r a d o sites dis-

  covered by Lakes a n d Lucas. T h e b o n e s , he w r o t e , "extend for seven

  miles & are by the ton."

  Marsh quickly put Reed and Carlin on his payroll a n d sent t h e m a

  contract u n d e r which they agreed to "take all reasonable precautions to

  keep all other collectors not authorized by Prof. Marsh out of the

  region." In the first year, Marsh's forces excavated approximately 30 tons

  of dinosaur bones. The professor quickly wrote a paper describing and

  n a m i n g for the first time such dinosaurs as the plated Stegosaurus ("roof

  reptile"), the carnivorous Allosaurus, and Nanosaurus ("dwarf reptile"),

  which was only 2 to 4 feet long.

  Cope, of course, wanted to enter this fertile region. He sent spies to

  see what was going on and then traveled there himself. At about this

  time, Carlin and Reed had a disagreement and parted com
pany. Carlin

  opened up his own quarry and sent his finds to Cope.

  Over the next ten years, the Wyoming fossil rush was as exciting if

  not quite as lucrative as the California gold rush had been 30 years ear-

  lier. Marsh and Cope continued to m i n e C o m o Bluff a n d other fossil

  fields in the region for dinosaurs. They apparently thought nothing of

  spying, bribing, intimidating, and stealing each other's employees.

  When Marsh's m a n Reed finished digging at a site, he destroyed all

  remaining bones so that Carlin could not c o m e in a n d ship t h e m to

  Cope.

  W h o won? Marsh's collectors uncovered 26 new species of dinosaurs

  at C o m o Bluff alone. Cope found only a handful of species at the

  Wyoming site, but he was more successful than Marsh in Colorado. For

  the record, over their lifetimes Marsh described 75 new dinosaur species

  to Cope's 55. In his comprehensive chronicle of the Cope/Marsh feud,

  The Bonehunters' Revenge, David Rains Wallace notes that 19 of Marsh's

  9 8 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E

  descriptions a n d 9 of Cope's descriptions are considered valid today.

  Cope described fewer dinosaur genera than Marsh, but he described

  1282 genera or species of North American fossil vertebrates, while his

  rival described 536.

  Science was the true winner. The Cope and Marsh forces introduced

  m o r e than new species. They introduced new methods of paleontolog-

  ical exploration and excavation. Despite the inexcusable destruction of

  fossils, the western collectors were also responsible for developing tech-

  niques for preserving a n d shipping bones that are still used today. The

  papers Cope and Marsh published formed the backbone of the study of

  vertebrate paleontology as the century turned. The skeletons their m e n

  found remain on display in m a n y m u s e u m s a r o u n d the world. Reed, for

  example, unearthed a nearly complete Apatosaurus—the correct gener-

  ic n a m e for what most people k n o w as the brontosaurus. It remains a

  major exhibit at Yale's Peabody M u s e u m .

  Sadly, success in the field did not bring an end to Cope vs. Marsh.

  In the 1880s, Cope lost most of his m o n e y by investing foolishly in sil-

  ver mines. Short of funds, he was unable to collect fossils or finish many

  publications. Meanwhile, Marsh, over Cope's objection, was elected

 

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