exclusive corporate funding for American experiences provided by Liberty Mutual major funding for American Experience is made possible by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation American Experience is also made possible by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you thank you [Music] thank you [Music] for more than a century Americans have had a love affair with Dinosaurs [Music] extinct for millions of years they were barely known until giant fossil bones were discovered in the mid-19th century two American scientists Edward Drinker cope and athenil Charles Marsh led the way to many of these discoveries Forefront of the young field of paleontology [Music] every iconic dinosaur every kid grows up with Apatosaurus Triceratops stegosaurus Allosaurus these guys went onto the American West and they found that stuff cope and Marsh shed light on the Deep past in a way no one had ever been able to do before they Unearthed more than 130 dinosaur species and some of the first fossil evidence supporting Darwin's new theory of evolution unfortunately there was a more sordid element too which was their insatiable hatred for each other which often just baffled and exasperated everyone around them they began life as friends then things unraveled and unraveled in quite a spectacular way [Music] copen Marsh locked horns for decades in one of the most bitter scientific rivalries in American history [Music] constantly vying for leadership in their young field they competed ruthlessly to secure gigantic bones in the American West [Music] they put American Science on the world stage and nearly destroyed one another in the process [Music] [Music] in the summer of 1868 a small group of scientists boarded a Union Pacific train for a sightseeing Excursion through the heart of a newly opened American West among them was O.C Marsh of Yale America's first University professor of paleontology looking out the window Marsh was transfixed while his fellow passengers saw magnificent landscapes Marsh saw much more schooled in geology he knew that great troves of prehistoric fossils could be buried in the ancient rocks I felt that entombed in the Sandy Clays he recalled there must be hidden the remains of many strange animals new to science long waiting to be brought to light here was a chance to establish his reputation while working on the greatest scientific problem of the age Charles Darwin's revolutionary work on the Origin of Species had been published in England only a few years earlier but Darwin despair that little physical evidence of evolution could be found in Europe where the heavily forested land concealed the geology underneath the Arid open American West Marsh was convinced would yield the kind of fossil evidence needed to prove Darwin's theory the American West is blessed by a couple of things number one a long history of mountains going up and when Mountains go up the next the foothills of mountains are a depression a basin and as soon as Mountains go up they start getting eroded by streams the streams bring down sand and mud that fills up that Basin at the bottom of the foothills that's a wonderful place to die and leave a good looking corpse but wait there's another element it's dry it's really dry it's drier than the Alps or the URLs it's drier than the caucuses someone you could take the railroad to Wyoming Colorado and New Mexico you walk around you can see the Rocks naked rocks and the rocks are full of fossils including bones Marsh collected little on this first trip but like a prospector who just caught a glimpse of the mother lode he vowed to return next time he'd bring a work party prepared to hunt for bones in the richest fossil fields on Earth OC Marsh was not the only one thinking about the Deep past in 1868. in Philadelphia at the Academy of Natural Sciences the world's first mounted dinosaur skeleton went on display it was called Hadrosaurus a creature said to have gone extinct millions of years ago and so unlike anything in the modern world it challenged the biblical story of creation now barely three years after the end of the Civil War it seemed that everything in America even the story of the prehistoric past was up for grabs Americans in the middle of the 19th century experienced two revolutions simultaneously one of course is the Civil War and that changes everything about the country politically economically socially and the other is scientific the idea that the world hasn't always been like it is today in fact where we might be standing right now was completely different 10 million 100 million 400 million years ago is a really powerful fascinating thrilling idea for people had resour had been Unearthed in a quarry in Haddonfield New Jersey and assembled by a group of scientists that included a 28 year old Philadelphia Quaker Edward Drinker cope had already made a name for himself with the discovery of the second known American dinosaur skeleton a creature he named laylops a self-taught prodigy he'd been captivated by science since childhood cope took a great interest in natural history and at a very young age he gained admission to the Academy of Natural Sciences and which was not open to the public in those days and he would make drawings of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs from the time that he was nine years old he was a brilliant fellow cope haunted the academy through his teams learning Anatomy organizing collections of fish and snakes developing a passion for fossils like his mentor Joseph leidy the discoverer of Hadrosaurus and America's first paleontologist cope was a gentleman naturalist following in the footsteps of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson men deeply devoted to understanding the natural world none of them have what we would regard as a credential or Advanced Training they have no phds because American colleges are not granting phds cope is part of that older gentleman's world that fall cope received a letter from Professor Marsha Yale whom he'd befriended a few years earlier when they were both in Europe now the professor wanted to see the Quarry where the hadrosaur had been found and cope was happy to oblige cope took Marsh on a field trip to visit the various Quarry operations in Southern New Jersey and they parted on good terms and Marsh went back to New Haven but after that trip hopes fossil Supply dried up it soon became clear why Marsh had made a deal with acquiry owners to send any new discoveries to his lab at Yale College cope was quite put out be taken in March out he'd introduce them to people and the next thing he knows he feels behind his back Marsh is stealing Bones from New Jersey Marsh is not part of that older 19th century gentleman's world of Natural Science he doesn't feel Bound by those Unwritten rules he operates in a in an almost business-like way much more aggressively he sees an opportunity in Haddonfield he grabs it the episode at Haddonfield cracked the veneer of marsh and Cope's early friendship a fracture that would deepen a few months later in Philadelphia [Music] cope had been reconstructing the skeleton of a prehistoric Marine Reptile from a jumble of disconnected bones he named the creature elasmosaurus and soon published an illustrated account of this unusual new species with its long tail and very short neck it was cope believed work that would Propel him to the top of his field [Music] but when Professor Marsh came to see the results it was clear to him that cope had misread the anatomy and put the skull on the wrong end of the skeleton cope puts the head on the tail you know Marsh was not going to let that get by Cope's Mentor Joseph Lighty confirmed that the Reconstruction was flawed cope cried desperately to retract the publication and cover up his mistake but it was too late cope was mortified and Marsh made sure that everyone knew that coped muffed this great elasmosaurus his wounded vanity received a shock from which it has never recovered Marsh later wrote and he has since been my bitter enemy in the summer of 1870 Professor Marsh headed west again leading the first scientific fossil Hunting Expedition on the Western frontier the railroad now stretched all the way to California but this was still the Wild West foreign stayed close to military forts for provisions and protection from hostile Indians [Music] his Entourage included a crew of students from Yale College whose families covered most of the fifteen thousand dollar cost of the expedition when you look at the picture of them getting ready to go and they're all like a totally cowboyed out they're the sciencies great industrialist families you know who never had a cowboy hat on their life dressing up with chaps and Spurs and John B Stetson and you know the whole thing their first guide on their first trip out there was Buffalo Bill Marsh was a skilled self-promoter who made sure the adventures of the Yale fussel Hunters filled the pages of Harper's monthly they braved Prairie fires storms and encounters with indians and they Unearthed tons of prehistoric Bones from the ancient Hills [Music] it would take months to sort through the hundreds of specimens they collected but Marsh had already accomplished his primary goal he had staked his claim to the fossil fields of the West and he had no intention of sharing them with anyone this is the age where the model of business is to establish a trust and Marsh wants to create the fossil Trust using Yale as its headquarters from Philadelphia Edward cope had been following Marsha's adventures with interest and envy he was desperate to get in on the fossil Bonanza but unlike Yale the Philadelphia Academy did not Mount expeditions it was still an association of gentlemen naturalists that depended on amateurs to send in fossils cope wrote to geologists and Explorer Ferdinand Hayden who now led one of the government survey Crews mapping the West questions in 1872 Hayden offered to outfit a fossil hunting trip for cope if he could get himself to Fort Bridger in Wyoming Marsh had been there the year before and published papers on his discoveries a trove of fossils from the early age of mammals cope was sure he could do better even back then scientists measured themselves by publication and it was clear to cope that there was just great fertile material out there but when he arrived at Fort Bridger he found that Hayden's survey crew had already moved on taking all the available horses and mules undaunted cope cobbled together a crew of local men wagons and pack animals and set out into the Bridger Basin Badlands unaware he was being watched by Marsha's spies when news of Cope's Expedition reached New Haven the Yale Professor was Furious cope was poaching on what Marsh considered his territory he immediately packed up and headed west by chance Joseph leidy was bound for Wyoming as well on a fossil hunting trip of his own the West it turned out would not be big enough for the three of them [Music] cope had the sight to himself for a time and the Badlands lived up to the name he was plagued by blood-sucking gnats bad water fever and Nightmares still he worked every day from Sun Up Until Dark looking for Trails of loose bone leading to skeletons still embedded in Rock within a few weeks cope realized he was not alone that lady and Marsh were hunting fossils as well and soon they all began finding the bones of a truly bizarre creature it was a fantastic Beast that looked like it was made up for a Hindu mythology it was as big as an elephant but had saber teeth gigantic fangs but was a plant eater but had horns six of them in two rows it's unbelievable eager for the prized right to name a new species each scientist rushed to be the first to get his findings into print cope dashed off a quick paper by Telegraph from Wyoming Marsh did the same but Joseph Lighty beat them both giving him priority to name the Beast uint ethereum robustum but that didn't stop cope and Marsh fueled by a toxic mix of rivalry and professional greed they continued to name new species of the same creature with very little evidence that the discoveries were unique they were finding these same saber-toothed Hindu monsters and they just took a hold of their brains they were rushing short papers into print not well thought out papers neither of them read each other's papers culpa named another species of Martial name five species and pretty soon copen Marsh were ignoring lighty's work he was the first one in this is what I call taxonomic carpet bombing there were two dozen names thrown at one species it would take decades to entangle the mess they made at Bridger basin but it took no time at all for marsh to declare war on cope What followed that winter and into the next spring was a Relentless effort by Marsh to discredit all of Cope's names and findings the quarrel began with legitimate questions about whether species named by cope had already been named by Marsh but it quickly escalated to personal attacks in scientific journals accusations of fraud false dates on papers even theft of fossils a war of words like nothing ever seen before in the state world of American Science let's face it famous scientists are not successful because of their capacity to you know to get along altogether because I mean really to be good and to find new things it's I'm right and you're wrong colleagues were appalled Joseph leidy most of all he could see that paleontology was moving beyond the reach of gentlemen naturalists staying in the game would require Deep Pockets institutional support and a willingness to compete with the likes of cope and Marsh Lighty is quintessentially that figure of the old Natural History he's Bound by a different set of scientific ethics he realizes that these two guys are playing a very different sort of game operating in very different kinds of ways I just don't think he has the stomach for it lady left cope and Marsh to fight it out in the scientific journals of the East and the fossil fields of the West with copenmore C here is now a wide open field something that has never been done before on a scale that has never been done before but the question is not how do we divide this up the question is how do I shut out my competitor back in New Haven Professor OC Marsh presided over a well-funded scientific Empire centered at the Yale College Museum which had been founded by his millionaire uncle and benefactor George Peabody Marsh has this really quite extraordinary career at Yale it gives them an Institutional home doesn't pay him a salary which means he doesn't really have to answer to people if he doesn't want to he's got his own money Marsh didn't always have money as a boy he lived on a farm in rural New York with little hope or ambition his father Caleb Marsh saw his son oathniel as basically the major farmhand and then suddenly he's plucked from obscurity by his Uncle George Peabody and stake to an education at Andover in Yale and German universities it was like a Horatio Alger story at Yale he grew into an imposing figure with influence and connections but few friends and no family of his own he spent a fortune building a lavish home in New Haven where he entertained important guests but lived alone his entire life stunted life I think in many ways emotionally and that one sees time and time again for the rest of his life inside the museum Marsh earned respect but little affection lab assistants grumbled about slow paychecks and lack of credit for their work the credit they learned always went to the professor [Music] Marsh ran a secretive operation keeping the greatest fossil collection in the world off limits to nearly everyone even fellow scientists he would soon make a significant exception in August 1876 a distinguished visitor from England arrived by steamship in New York City Thomas Henry Huxley was one of the world's most renowned scientists a brilliant biologist and a passionate defender of Darwin's theory of evolution Huxley traveled straight to the Yale College Museum where Professor Marsh claimed to have fossil evidence that would prove Darwin right since his first trip West Marsh had been piecing together the 50 million year evolution of the horse from a fox-sized creature with four toes to the modern animal with its single hoof he had meticulously and compulsively collected horses so that by the time Huxley comes to visit Yale Marsh has 33 different species of horse in three different families and there it was the chain almost unbroken and Huxley was in awe then Marsh brought out another fossil a prehistoric bird with teeth something no modern bird has suggesting that birds arose from reptilian ancestors here was more support for Darwin and more Acclaim for O.C Marsh and Cox he said you are a conjurer for whatever I ask you produce that moment was big for both Marsh and for Huxley and for the theory of evolution Darwin himself wrote Martian appreciative note calling Marsha's work the best support to the theory of evolution which has appeared within the last 20 years Marsha's fossils were putting American Science on the map Americans have always felt inferior to Europeans culturally politically economically finally paleontology seems to be the place where we can be better than the Europeans while Marsh basked in the glow of professional Acclaim cope was thriving too the death of his father left him with a sizable inheritance now he could Finance his own fossil Hunting Expeditions and compete with Marsh Head to Head in the summer of 1876 leaving his wife and young daughter behind in Philadelphia cope set out for the desolate bone fields of Montana just weeks after Custer's defeat at Little Bighorn he was absolutely worn don't do this bad idea in the town of Fort Benton cope tried to hire a crew to help him in the field but found no takers the local men strongly advised him to carry a gun but cope was a Quaker he was a pacifist he didn't believe in violence and so he wouldn't hear of it cope loved being in the field and he took risks he would go out to the Judith River Country in Montana I'd go hiking up these Ravines where the horses nearly fell to their death he would be warned of Lakota war parties of Sioux Warriors didn't care the fossil hunting he wrote his daughter Julia was very good indeed we find in the high rocks there are many bones and teeth of huge fossil reptiles like laylops and Hadrosaurus they were as large as elephants but their teeth were very small no larger than the end of my little finger cope made one Discovery after another turning out papers at a rate that would make him the most prolific author in American Scientific history somehow cope could look out at the rocks and see the unfolding story of the deep past he could show how you could start with an animal like finacetus this mammal that looked a little like a sheep with the toes of a raccoon and very reasonably of all the Tinker with the feet and the teeth and you can get a horse you get a rhino you could get a taper you could get an antelope he showed how small increments darwinian increments could generate the whole Tree of Life [Music] cope is maybe the first paleontologist who can take all of this Dusty material coming up out of the ground and begin to imagine what it really looked like how it functioned how it moved how it related to its natural environment that leap of imagination cope was quite brilliant at [Music] Camp he wrote Julia is on dog Creek 10 miles from the mouth it rained two days ago and we had to stay in the tent and wagon the creek Rose very high and the water got so muddy that we had to boil it before we could drink it then the high bear Badlands Bluffs got slippery as soap so that we could hardly hunt for fossils slid around and got all muddy but the creek is down and the Bluffs are dry now farewell read and learn all they can for the more they knows the more useful they will be so say thy loving Papa cope is a complicated character he has great warmth people who were his friends loved him and yet on the other hand he had this harassable thin-skinned quick on the trigger personality one of his Philadelphia colleagues called him a militant paleontologist four years had passed since the militant paleontologist had clashed with the Yale professor over Bridger basin during that time the two Rivals had barely exchanged a word but hostilities were about to break out again over the bones of the largest creatures that ever lived in the spring of 1877 in the Foothills above Morrison Colorado an amateur painter and fossil hunter named Arthur Lakes stumbled on something astonishing he comes over the Hogback over the shark Ridge and he sees gigantic bones in hunks of river Sandbar sediment or bingo in a letter to O.C Marsh Lakes wrote of Bones so utterly beyond anything I had ever conceived possible that I could hardly believe my eyes [Music] vertebrae neck bones there were a yard or more across a single bone and the leg bones were you know you couldn't wrap your arms around that they were so big [Music] Lakes was a freelancer looking for money for his find he shipped a few dinosaur bones to Marsh in New Haven and a few to Edward COPE in Philadelphia as soon as the first lot arrived it was clear these were new species new families of species a new slice of evolutionary time the late Jurassic that no one had ever seen before Marsh tried to stake his claim putting lakes on the payroll and sending men to Colorado to keep cope out of the way but it was too late cope already had collectors of his own harvesting similar giant bones nearby then Marsh learned of an even bigger find from a fossil hunter working at Como Bluff Wyoming along the base of the ridge less than half a mile from the Union Pacific tracks was a truly extraordinary cache of Jurassic bones they extended for seven miles he was told and were by the ton cope and Marsh had passed Como Bluff on the train more than once but what looked like rocks from a distance were actually chunks of fossil bone marking the greatest dinosaur graveyard the world has ever known again Marsh tried to lock it up and again he was too late cope had also heard about Como Bluff and soon opened quarries of his own determined to stay ahead of cope Marsh kept his men working straight through the winter Arthur Lakes wrote about finger numbing cold 25 to 30 degrees below zero working in the winter just seems utter Madness paleontologists with rare exception to not subject themselves to this sort of abuse anymore the conditions were grueling but the results were spectacular within a few months you had four separate digs producing hundreds of Bones dozens of skulls and skeletons of the late Jurassic it was Jurassic Park finally [Music] Jurassic Critters are world like none before none after the average size of a plant eater was multi-ton five six seven tons many of the plane eaters go 100 feet 120 feet as big as 10 elephants 20 elephants [Music] the frenzied efforts of marsh and cope revealed a lost world an unknown era in the history of life 150 million years ago when the High Prairie was a lush Forest [Music] between them cope and Marsh discovered over a hundred types of dinosaurs including stegosaurs allosaurs apatosaurs camarosaurs some of the largest animals ever to walk the earth these weren't just big lizards they weren't just big cold-blooded Critters they were something else they were full of bird-like features mammal-like features this was the highest level of the reptile line the Fantastic discoveries made Marsh and cope even more protective of their quarries convinced his rival with stealing bones Marsh exchanged coded telegrams with spies who kept an eye on cope code name Jones and most egregious of all Marsh ordered his collectors to destroy fossils to keep them away from cope if you can't take the bones smash them don't leave them so they could fall into somebody else's hands their frantic competition for bones had pushed The two scientists to the brink Cope's very existence tormented Marsh sometimes be heard shouting God damn it I wish the Lord would take him there is a little bit of the hunt for gold in hunting for bones and that's called the Fred sea Dobb Syndrome from Humphrey Bogart's character and Treasure of Sierra Madre what's good for you he won't monkey around with Fred C Dobbs he wants his gold and he wants his partner's gold and he's sure that his partners are going to try to steal his goal make another move toward me and I'll pull the trigger the end it becomes murderous get your hands up come on get him up and that happened to cope in Marsh there were more than enough bounds for both of them weren't enough bones for a dozen more but they kept on seeing that your win is my loss in November 1878 in New York City the National Academy of Sciences met under the leadership of its new president OC Marsh the academy had been asked to advise Congress on the future of the government surveys that had been mapping the West since the end of the Civil War [Music] there had been multiple surveys of the West run by multiple Departments of the government there was some competition and overlap and it was felt that surveys had to be consolidated cope had long been linked to the Hayden survey best known for the exploration of what recently had been named Yellowstone National Park [Music] Marsh joined forces with John Wesley Powell the Explorer of the Colorado River and a leading advocate of government-sponsored scientific planning in the settlement of the West pal has a vision for how science can be used to shape the American future especially the American West but in order to do that is going to mean an enormous expansion of the federal role in the funding of Science in order to make that case he has to rely on Marsh who at this point May well be the preeminent American scientist operating in 1881 Congress Consolidated the competing surveys into one Nationwide organization Geological Survey would be headed by Powell who soon appointed Marsh America's Chief paleontologist [Music] OC Marsh was now exactly where he wanted to be he had nearly unlimited government funding a staff of 50 people from bone collectors to lab assistants and a generous annual salary and he was finally in a position to get rid of his Nemesis Edward cope once and for all the surveys provide not only information but they provide a venue to get your scientific ideas out if there are lots of different venues then there can be lots of different voices if there's only one venue and it's controlled by your arch enemy it means that that venue has just been cut off to you this is actually where the Victorian melodrama begins without government sponsorship and with his inheritance dwindling cope needed money in desperation he invested his Savings in a mining Venture in New Mexico many of these mining companies the only thing they're mining is investors and for cope it's disastrous he loses a ton of money going from being relatively comfortable to becoming downright poor he applied for jobs at Princeton the Smithsonian even the Central Park Zoo with no success and was forced to sell the family home in Philadelphia by 1889 cope was separated from his wife and living in a cramped apartment with nothing left but his beloved fossils and if OC Marsh had his way cope would soon lose those as well years earlier Marsh had inserted language in the survey's charter mandating that all fossils collected with government funds be turned over to the Smithsonian he'd made a deal with Powell to keep his own collection at Yale but he knew that cope had no such protection Marsh said well those things in Cope's hands have been paid for by federal dollars so they belonged to the Smithsonian and so Marsh went to the Secretary of the Smithsonian he said let's take them cope fought back he produced detailed records going back 20 years proving that he'd paid for most of his collecting out of his own pocket he saved every blood he received cope was able to say here's how I've spent the government money and here's how I spent my own fortune which was at least 10 times what the government had invested [Music] cope managed to hang on to his fossils but now he wanted Revenge cope went ballistic I mean cope became hysterical Coke it just completely went off his rocker over the years cope had been collecting bits and pieces about Marsh and Marsha's ill doings what he called his martianna and he finally took his Marciano and handed them over to a freelance journalist on a Sunday morning in 1890 the long-running feud between America's top paleontologists spilled onto the streets of New York City in the pages of the New York Herald Edward cope accused OC Marsh of plagiarism incompetence and fraud spanning more than 20 years Cope's criticisms over scatter shot they're sort of all over the map maybe some that are true maybe some that are half truths maybe some that are not true at all he also accused John Wesley Powell of corruption and misuse of government funds at the U.S Geological Survey newspapers have always loved scandals they've always loved political scandals but the notion that you could turn dinosaurs into Scandal is pretty new Martian Powell fought back calling cope a liar and a thief the public war of words dragged on for three weeks until the herald ran out of material but the Scandal left OC Marsh in a vulnerable position in Washington Cope's allegations of corruption at the survey caught the attention of politicians eager to slash Federal support for the institution under Powell the USGS had grown into an exceptionally powerful agency one that United science and government in unprecedented ways it was an alliance that worried many in Congress some of the congressmen were aghast to think that the federal government of the United States of America was paying more for science than any other nation in the world they took aim at the department of paleontology headed by Marsh who had spent government money collecting fossils and Publishing expensive books one of the pieces of work that came to the attention of Converse was a book entitled odont or nithies and that means birds with teeth it was among Marcia's greatest scientific achievements some of the best fossil evidence of evolution but to his critics it was evidence of something else a waste of taxpayers money there was one Congressman Hillary Herbert from Alabama who just never saw any good in this science stuff and Herbert on the floor holds up this book what are we doing financing books about birds with teeth [Music] using birds with teeth as a rallying cry Herbert turned Congress against Powell lawmakers cut Powell's budget in half eliminating the department of paleontology a terse telegram to Marsh delivered the bad news he immediately lost all of his survey funding and staff he had to mortgage his house to Yale and ask for a salary to make ends meet then he heard from the Smithsonian Washington now wanted any fossils that have been paid for with survey funds Marsh was literally buried in crates of dinosaur bones and he did not know which belonged to Yale and which belonged to the federal government there was no catalog Marsh had not done his accounting properly he effectively failed the audit and so Marsh had set this trap for cope and inadvertently ensnared himself in it more than 80 tons of fossils had to be shipped to Washington a small part of Marsh's collection but a painful loss for a man who had jealously guarded every bone his days as being the premier man of science the premier paleontologist all that stuff was gone he was basically finished as a man of science [Music] the cope Marsh rivalry three decades long had cost both men dearly and neither had much time left by 1897 Cope's Health had failed his body now ravaged by severe kidney disease [Music] in his room in Philadelphia cope was treating himself with massive amounts of morphine and Belladonna when he received an unexpected call a young artist named Charles Knight implored cope to help him show the world what dinosaurs had looked like when they walked the Earth even though he was close to death the scientists brought out his private notebooks to help the artist put Flesh on the bones he had spent a lifetime unearthing and trying to understand for the better part of two weeks cope brings the vanished world to life how these creatures stood how they walked across the landscape what they fed on that imaginative leap from Anatomy to life in some ways it's the last Testament of this paleontologist who only has a little time left thank you when they were finally done an exhausted cope asked Knight to help him hide the notebooks under his bed even at the end of his life cope was sure that if he let down his guard for a minute Marsh would steal his work [Music] a few days later he was found dead in his room at age 56. Marsh didn't last much longer on a February night in 1899 after a dispiriting trip to the Smithsonian to resolve the fate of his collection he walked home from the train station in a cold rain and contracted pneumonia he died two weeks later a mere 186 dollars in his bank account I doubt wrote a colleague whether his most intimate friends penetrated the recesses or really in any measure understood him he was 68 years old despite their bitter Feud or perhaps because of it Edward cope and OC Marsh changed the face of American Science [Music] cope left behind a vast body of scholarship 13 000 specimens and a broad view of prehistoric life [Music] Marsh left an even bigger fossil collection including dozens of iconic dinosaurs and some of the best evidence of evolution most American paleontological work descends from copen Marsh they really do lay an extraordinary foundation for the work that will go on in the 20th century [Music] the fact these guys got there took these things out of the ground and put them back or we can maintain them under these Museum conditions great service to all of us and even at the time if they couldn't see what it is that was at stake with this stuff we sure can now [Music] they both were called by the beauty of the big game hunt the big game hunt in deep time and that's a very special thing [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] exclusive corporate funding for American Experience is provided by Liberty Mutual major funding for American Experience is made possible by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation American Experience is also made possible by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you thank you [Music]