MSNBC: Fish swam the Sahara, bolstering out of Africa theory
Fish may have once swum across the Sahara, a finding that could shed light on how humanity made its way out of Africa, researchers said.
The cradle of humanity lies south of the Sahara, which begs the question as to how our species made its way past it. The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, and would seem a major barrier for any humans striving to migrate off the continent.
Scientists have often focused on the Nile Valley as the corridor by which humans left Africa. However, considerable research efforts have failed to uncover evidence for its consistent use by people leaving the continent, and precisely how watery it has been over time is controversial.
Now it turns out the Sahara might not have been quite as impassable as once thought — not only for humanity, but for fish as well.
"Fish appeared to have swam across the Sahara during its last wet phase sometime between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago," researcher Nick Drake, a geographer at King's College London, told LiveScience. "The Sahara is not a barrier to the migrations of animals and people. Thus it is possible — likely? —that early modern humans did so, and this could explain how we got out of Africa."
Using satellite imagery and digital maps of the landscape, the researchers found the Sahara was once covered by a dense network of rivers, lakes and inland deltas. This large waterway channeled water and animals into and across the Sahara during wet, "green" times. [ See digital map of ancient Sahara ]
In their analysis, Drake and his colleagues found evidence that many creatures, including aquatic ones, dispersed across the Sahara recently. For example, 25 North African animal species have populations both north and south of the Sahara with small refuges within the desert, including catfish (Clarias gariepinus), tilapia (Tilapia zillii), jewel cichlid fish (Hemichromis letourneuxi) and freshwater snails such as the red-rimmed melania (Melanoides tuberculata). Indeed, more animals may have once crossed over the Sahara than over the Nile corridor, the researchers said — only nine animal species that occupy the Nile corridor today are also found both north and south of the Sahara.
If fish could have crossed the Sahara, it is hard to imagine that humans didn't. Analysis of African languages and artifacts suggest that ancient waterways recently affected how humans occupied the Sahara. For instance, speakers of Nilo-Saharan languages once lived across central and southern Sahara, and may have once hunted aquatic creatures with barbed bone points and fish hooks. In addition, ancient lake sediments suggest the Sahara was green roughly 125,000 years ago, back when anatomically modern humans might have begun migrating out of Africa.
Future work could focus on when species got across the Sahara — genetic analysis of fish could help pinpoint such times in fish, Drake said. However, further research into the past of the Sahara could prove difficult and even dangerous, he noted. Some of the Saharan countries the researchers would like to visit in order to analyze the genetics of fish populations or date the ages of ancient shorelines "are deemed to be too dangerous to visit due to terrorist activity or civil war," Drake said.
The scientists detailed their findings online Dec. 27 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Researchers: Ancient human remains found in Israel
What the Israeli archeologists have done here is ridiculous. They've found a single tooth and claim from this that mankind originated in Israel? I think not. Even as you read the article, another scientist says it is an "extremely remote" possibility.
Researchers: Ancient human remains found in Israel
JERUSALEM – Israeli archaeologists said Monday they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans.
A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old.
"It's very exciting to come to this conclusion," said archaeologist Avi Gopher, whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found.
He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim. If it does, he says, "this changes the whole picture of evolution."
The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to modern human's ancestors, it could mean that modern man in fact originated in what is now Israel.
Sir Paul Mellars, a prehistory expert at Cambridge University, said the study is reputable, and the find is "important" because remains from that critical time period are scarce, but it is premature to say the remains are human.
"Based on the evidence they've sited, it's a very tenuous and frankly rather remote possibility," Mellars said. He said the remains are more likely related to modern man's ancient relatives, the Neanderthals.
According to today's accepted scientific theories, modern humans and Neanderthals stemmed from a common ancestor who lived in Africa about 700,000 years ago. One group of descendants migrated to Europe and developed into Neanderthals, later becoming extinct. Another group stayed in Africa and evolved into Homo sapiens — modern humans.
Teeth are often unreliable indicators of origin, and analyses of skull remains would more definitively identify the species found in the Israeli cave, Mellars said.
Gopher, the Israeli archaeologist, said he is confident his team will find skulls and bones as they continue their dig.
The prehistoric Qesem cave was discovered in 2000, and excavations began in 2004. Researchers Gopher, Ran Barkai and Israel Hershkowitz published their study in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Researchers: Ancient human remains found in Israel
JERUSALEM – Israeli archaeologists said Monday they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans.
A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old.
"It's very exciting to come to this conclusion," said archaeologist Avi Gopher, whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found.
He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim. If it does, he says, "this changes the whole picture of evolution."
The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to modern human's ancestors, it could mean that modern man in fact originated in what is now Israel.
Sir Paul Mellars, a prehistory expert at Cambridge University, said the study is reputable, and the find is "important" because remains from that critical time period are scarce, but it is premature to say the remains are human.
"Based on the evidence they've sited, it's a very tenuous and frankly rather remote possibility," Mellars said. He said the remains are more likely related to modern man's ancient relatives, the Neanderthals.
According to today's accepted scientific theories, modern humans and Neanderthals stemmed from a common ancestor who lived in Africa about 700,000 years ago. One group of descendants migrated to Europe and developed into Neanderthals, later becoming extinct. Another group stayed in Africa and evolved into Homo sapiens — modern humans.
Teeth are often unreliable indicators of origin, and analyses of skull remains would more definitively identify the species found in the Israeli cave, Mellars said.
Gopher, the Israeli archaeologist, said he is confident his team will find skulls and bones as they continue their dig.
The prehistoric Qesem cave was discovered in 2000, and excavations began in 2004. Researchers Gopher, Ran Barkai and Israel Hershkowitz published their study in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Merry christmas to all
In whatever you conceive this season to be.
A video, which my Kindle readers can't view, unfortunately.
The New Seekers singing "I'd like to teach the world to sing"
(Go to Youtube and do a serch on the song if you'd like to hear it.)
A video, which my Kindle readers can't view, unfortunately.
The New Seekers singing "I'd like to teach the world to sing"
(Go to Youtube and do a serch on the song if you'd like to hear it.)
Friday, December 24, 2010
Research: Pterygotid Sea Scorpions Not The Terror Of Ancient Seas
Underwater Times: Research: Pterygotid Sea Scorpions Not The Terror Of Ancient Seas
BUFFALO, New York -- Experiments by a team of researchers in New York and New Jersey have generated evidence that questions the common belief that the pterygotid eurypterids ("sea scorpions") were high-level predators in the Paleozoic oceans. This group, which ranged the seas from about 470 to 370 million years ago (long before the dinosaurs appeared), included the largest and, arguably, scariest-looking arthropods known to have evolved on planet Earth. Reaching lengths of 2 ½ meters with a body supported by well-developed legs, and armed with a pair of forward-facing claws laden with sharp projecting spines, they seem like the Tyrannosaurus rex among the invertebrates.
But in a new study, published in volume 39 of the Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, Richard Laub (Buffalo Museum of Science) and his colleagues Victor Tollerton (Research Associate, New York State Museum) and Richard Berkof (Stevens Institute of Technology) show that the mechanical constraints on the claw of the pterygotid sea scorpion Acutiramus made it incapable of penetrating the external shell of a medium-sized horseshoe crab without danger of rupturing. They suggest that these imposing sea scorpions, and by extension others of their family who lived in the seas about 470 to 370 million years ago, were not necessarily the voracious predators they are commonly believed to have been. The practical operational force that could be safely applied by the claw of Acutiramus without causing damage to it was no more than about 5 Newtons, whereas a force of 8-17 Newtons was required to penetrate the horseshoe crab's armor.
Laub's team also noted that the absence of an 'elbow joint' between the claws and the body of Acutiramus limited claw movement, making them more effective in grasping prey on the sea floor than capturing actively fleeing fish or other swimming animals. Armed with serrated spines, the claws may have been used together to both capture and shred the prey, but the predatory capabilities of Acutiramus would appear to lack the force necessary for this animal to operate as a major predator.
"I have long been suspicious of prevailing popular interpretations" said Dr. Roy Plotnick, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was not involved in the study. "This is a welcome contribution that strongly supports an alternative interpretation of claw function" he said.
"Our results derail the image of these imposing-looking animals, the largest arthropods yet known to have existed, as fearsome predators, or at least as predators of other eurypterids and of the armored fishes of the time" said team leader Richard Laub, who noted that "it opens the possibility that they were scavengers or even vegetarians".
BUFFALO, New York -- Experiments by a team of researchers in New York and New Jersey have generated evidence that questions the common belief that the pterygotid eurypterids ("sea scorpions") were high-level predators in the Paleozoic oceans. This group, which ranged the seas from about 470 to 370 million years ago (long before the dinosaurs appeared), included the largest and, arguably, scariest-looking arthropods known to have evolved on planet Earth. Reaching lengths of 2 ½ meters with a body supported by well-developed legs, and armed with a pair of forward-facing claws laden with sharp projecting spines, they seem like the Tyrannosaurus rex among the invertebrates.
But in a new study, published in volume 39 of the Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, Richard Laub (Buffalo Museum of Science) and his colleagues Victor Tollerton (Research Associate, New York State Museum) and Richard Berkof (Stevens Institute of Technology) show that the mechanical constraints on the claw of the pterygotid sea scorpion Acutiramus made it incapable of penetrating the external shell of a medium-sized horseshoe crab without danger of rupturing. They suggest that these imposing sea scorpions, and by extension others of their family who lived in the seas about 470 to 370 million years ago, were not necessarily the voracious predators they are commonly believed to have been. The practical operational force that could be safely applied by the claw of Acutiramus without causing damage to it was no more than about 5 Newtons, whereas a force of 8-17 Newtons was required to penetrate the horseshoe crab's armor.
Laub's team also noted that the absence of an 'elbow joint' between the claws and the body of Acutiramus limited claw movement, making them more effective in grasping prey on the sea floor than capturing actively fleeing fish or other swimming animals. Armed with serrated spines, the claws may have been used together to both capture and shred the prey, but the predatory capabilities of Acutiramus would appear to lack the force necessary for this animal to operate as a major predator.
"I have long been suspicious of prevailing popular interpretations" said Dr. Roy Plotnick, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was not involved in the study. "This is a welcome contribution that strongly supports an alternative interpretation of claw function" he said.
"Our results derail the image of these imposing-looking animals, the largest arthropods yet known to have existed, as fearsome predators, or at least as predators of other eurypterids and of the armored fishes of the time" said team leader Richard Laub, who noted that "it opens the possibility that they were scavengers or even vegetarians".
UK’s biggest CT scan to be used on fossil
Indie Pro Pub: UK’s biggest CT scan to be used on fossil
British scientists are using the country’s most powerful CT scanner to investigate a recently found fossil of one of the world’s most ferocious sea monsters of pre-historic times.
The fossil, found recently along the U.K.’s Jurassic coast, belongs to a pliosaur and is considered the largest fossil of this predator ever found. At 2.4 meters long (7.9 feet), with a crocodile-like head, paddle-like limbs, and razor sharp teeth, it ruled the oceans 150 million years ago. With a skull measurement like this, the monster would have been 10-16 meters (33-52 feet) long and weigh up to 12 tonnes.
The CT scan will x-ray the skull and provide 3D pictures and will, scientists hope, determine if this particular giant is a new species. The skull is being gently worked out of the rock by preparator Scott Moore-Fay, and is expected to take more than 1,000 hours of intense and careful labor.
Moore-Fay was excited to be able to use the CT scan and said equipment like this will prevent any damage from occurring to the fossil.
The funding for the scanner has been provided by the Engineering Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) and the University of Southampton, and is the largest and most powerful CT scanner in the U.K.
University of Southampton engineer Dr. Mark Mavrogordato said a 3D picture representing the original specimen would be the end result, which can be sliced and diced however needed, almost if being dissected by knife, only digitally and non-destructively.
Richard Forrest, team Palaeontologist, said, after examining the fossil and noting the hidden teeth, that the creature had an enormously powerful bite, and could have bitten a car in half.
But one the main goals is to determine if it is a new species to science.
Forrest said from the outside it looks similar to other pliosaurs found, just much bigger, but internal investigations will reveal if this species has not been seen before.
The fossil will eventually be mounted and displayed at the Dorset County Museum in 2011, in Dorchester, with mouth agape, and with a life size model of its head beside it so visitors can see exactly how large and terrifying it really was.
British scientists are using the country’s most powerful CT scanner to investigate a recently found fossil of one of the world’s most ferocious sea monsters of pre-historic times.
The fossil, found recently along the U.K.’s Jurassic coast, belongs to a pliosaur and is considered the largest fossil of this predator ever found. At 2.4 meters long (7.9 feet), with a crocodile-like head, paddle-like limbs, and razor sharp teeth, it ruled the oceans 150 million years ago. With a skull measurement like this, the monster would have been 10-16 meters (33-52 feet) long and weigh up to 12 tonnes.
The CT scan will x-ray the skull and provide 3D pictures and will, scientists hope, determine if this particular giant is a new species. The skull is being gently worked out of the rock by preparator Scott Moore-Fay, and is expected to take more than 1,000 hours of intense and careful labor.
Moore-Fay was excited to be able to use the CT scan and said equipment like this will prevent any damage from occurring to the fossil.
The funding for the scanner has been provided by the Engineering Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) and the University of Southampton, and is the largest and most powerful CT scanner in the U.K.
University of Southampton engineer Dr. Mark Mavrogordato said a 3D picture representing the original specimen would be the end result, which can be sliced and diced however needed, almost if being dissected by knife, only digitally and non-destructively.
Richard Forrest, team Palaeontologist, said, after examining the fossil and noting the hidden teeth, that the creature had an enormously powerful bite, and could have bitten a car in half.
But one the main goals is to determine if it is a new species to science.
Forrest said from the outside it looks similar to other pliosaurs found, just much bigger, but internal investigations will reveal if this species has not been seen before.
The fossil will eventually be mounted and displayed at the Dorset County Museum in 2011, in Dorchester, with mouth agape, and with a life size model of its head beside it so visitors can see exactly how large and terrifying it really was.
Monday, November 29, 2010
1868 - Elasmosaurus - plesiosaur
From wikipedia:
Elasmosaurus from Greek elasmos 'thin plate' (referring to thin plates in its pelvic girdle) + sauros 'lizard') is a genus of plesiosaur with an extremely long neck that lived in the Late Cretaceous.
It was about 14 m (46 ft) in length and weighed over 2,000 kg (2.2 tons), making it the second longest plesiosaur. It had a large body and four flippers for limbs. More than half of its length was neck, which had more than 70 vertebrae, more than any other animal. It had a relatively small head with sharp teeth.
Discovery (finally! Wikipedia goes into details about how a prehistoric creature was discovered. Never fear - I'll be doing the necessary research and re-posting all posts that do not have such detailed info - after I find it out!)
Elasmosaurus platyurus was described in March, 1868 by Edward Drinker Cope from a fossil discovered and collected by Dr. Theophilus Turner, a military doctor, in western Kansas, USA. Although other specimens of elasmosaurs have been found in various locations in North America, Carpenter (1999) determined that Elasmosaurus platyurus was the only representative of the genus.
Cope did not include the hind paddles in this figure in part due to his erroneous belief that Elasmosaurus was propelled by its extremely long “tail ”When E. D. Cope received the specimen in early March, 1868, he had a pre-conceived idea of what it should look like, and mistakenly placed the head on the wrong end (e.g. the tail). In his defense, at the time he was an expert on lizards, which have a short neck and a long tail, and no one had ever seen a plesiosaur the size of Elasmosaurus.
Although popular legend notes that it was Othniel Charles Marsh who pointed out the error, there is no factual justification for this account . However, this event is often cited as one of the causes of their long-lasting and acrimonious rivalry, known as the "Bone Wars". In fact, although Marsh personally collected at least one plesiosaur from Kansas, and had several more from Kansas in the Yale Peabody collection, he never published a single paper on them (Everhart, 2005).
Although Cope verbally announced the discovery of Elasmosaurus platyurus in March 1868, he did not publish the "preprint" of his erroneous reconstruction of Elasmosaurus until August 1869. While much smaller, long-necked plesiosaurs from the Jurassic of England were well known at the time, this was the first time anyone had ever seen a Cretaceous elasmosaur. Cope's reconstruction showed it to have a long sinuous tail like a lizard or a mosasaur.
Note that while O.C. Marsh claimed to have pointed out Cope's error "20 years after the fact" in an 1890 newspaper article, it was actually Joseph Leidy who pointed out the problem in his Remarks on Elasmosaurus platyurus address at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia meeting on March 8, 1870.
Friday, November 26, 2010
1818 - Ichthyosaurus - Ichthyosauria
From Wikipedia:
Ichthyosaurus (derived from Greek ichthys meaning 'fish' and sauros meaning 'lizard') is an extinct genus of ichthyosaur from the Early Jurassic (Hettangian - Sinemurian) of Europe (Belgium, England, Switzerland). It is among the best known ichthyosaur genera, with the Order Ichthyosauria being named after it.
Ichthyosaurus was the first complete fossil to be discovered in the early 19th century by Mary Anning in England.
In popular culture
A giant Ichthyosaur appears in Jules Verne's book Journey to the Center of the Earth where it fights a plesiosaurus and wins. In the novel the Ichthyosaur appears larger than it was in reality.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
1878 - Edaphosaurus - Pelycosaur
From Wikipedia:
Edaphosaurus is a genus of prehistoric reptile which lived around 303 to 299 million years ago, during the late Carboniferous to early Permian periods. The name Edaphosaurus means "ground lizard" and is derived from the Greek edaphos ("ground, land") and sauros ("lizard").
This genus was first known from remains discovered in North America, in the late 19th century, and described by American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope. More recently other fossils attributed to Edaphosaurus have been found in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The most characteristic feature of Edaphosaurus is a sail on its back similar to that of other reptiles of the same time, such as the large apex predator Dimetrodon. However, the sail on Edaphosaurus is different in shape and morphology. Along with the reptile-like family Diadectidae, Edaphosaurus is one of the earliest known large plant-eating tetrapods (land-living vertebrates). Early descriptions, referring to its sharp teeth, suggest that the reptile may have fed on small invertebrates, such as mollusks, although paleontologists now point out that Edaphosaurus also shows herbivore characteristics.
Monday, November 22, 2010
1878 - Dimetrodon - Synapsid
Dimetrodon, meaning "two measures of teeth" was a predatory synapsid genus that flourished during the Permian period, living between 280–265 million years ago (Artinskian to Capitanian stages). It was more closely related to mammals than to true reptiles such as lizards. It is classified as a pelycosaur. Fossils of Dimetrodon have been found in North America and Europe.
Dimetrodon had a spectacular sail on its back, which may have been used for regulating body temperature or for display.
In popular culture
In many popular culture references, Dimetrodon is often erroneously seen as a dinosaur or as living alongside dinosaurs.
A composite of Edaphosaurus and Dimetrodon fossils went on display in 1907 in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, presented by the curator of vertebrate paleontology Henry Fairfield Osborn and illustrated in the pages of Scientific American (May 1907) as "Naosaurus," by scientific illustrator Charles R. Knight.
Dimetrodon's film debut was in 1959 in the movie Journey to the Center of the Earth. The members of the Lindenbrook's expedition encounter a herd of Dimetrodons on the beach of a subterranean ocean. At first the hungry Dimetrodons try to kill them. But when Hans kills one Dimetrodon with spears, the herd starts eating the killed Dimetrodon; and pays no attention to the humans who move a raft in the water. Lindenbrook claims that Dimetrodons can't swim.
Dimetrodon has also been featured in various television programs. In the 1974 television series Land of the Lost, a very large Dimetrodon (about 26 feet or 8 m long) named "Torchy" first appeared in the Season 3 episode "Cornered." Somehow, Torchy could breathe fire and would often eat coal to stoke his internal furnace, leading him to fight with the show's female Allosaurus, "Big Alice," and winning.
A Dimetrodon was briefly seen in The Land Before Time. It is shown sporting a forked tongue common to snakes.
The Dimetrodon was seen in the Disney movie Fantasia (1940)during its segment "The Rite of Spring."
In the television documentary Walking With Monsters (called Before the Dinosaurs in the United States), baby Dimetrodon were shown hatching with sails, fully independent. In fact, no Dimetrodon eggs have yet been found and it is entirely possible that the sail, which would be hard to store in an egg, was either absent or not rigid upon hatching. Hatchlings were portrayed sprinting towards trees after hatching in order to escape cannibalistic adults, behaviors based on the modern Komodo Dragon. Dimetrodon was also shown as having an egg-laying style similar to the modern crocodile, though no evidence regarding Dimetrodon reproduction has ever actually been found. Similarly, Dimetrodon were shown to eat 90% of a carcass whereas lions would eat 70, and were also shown not to stand dung, to the point that they would only eat intestines after shaking out the waste inside.
There are several species of Dimetrodon (the last name is the person who named it. The first Dimetrodon was named by Edward Drinker Cope):
D. angelensis Olson, 1962
D. booneorum Romer, 1937
D. dollovianus Cope, 1888
D. fritillus Cope, 1878
D. giganhomogenes Case, 1907
D. gigas Sternberg, 1942
D. grandis Case, 1907
D. limbatus Cope, 1877
D. loomisi Romer, 1937
D. macrospondylus Cope, 1884
D. milleri Romer, 1937
D. natalis Cope, 1877
D. occidentalis Berman, 1977
D. platycentrus Case, 1907
D. teutonis Berman, Reisz, Martens & Henrici, 2001
Cave canem
The entry on Dimetrodon in its first paragraph in Dinosaurs, Igloo, 2006 says "The name Dimetrodon was given by Edward Drinker Cope in 1884 and means "two measured teeth."
The last paragraph of the entry says, "The first Dimetrodon fossil was discovered in 1887."
This just goes to show that you can't take references for granted. I'll have to do some more research on this, using actual books instead of internet sources, to find out when the first Dimetrodon was found (as well as when the subsequent ones were found.) Or, it may be that the early year is for when the bones were found (by dinosaur diggers hired by Cope), but it wasn't examined and named until 1884. I shall find out.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Unknown at the time of this writing!: Gerrothorax - amphibian
I'm beginning this blog by going through the book Dinosaurs: Discover the World of These Amazing Prehistoric Creatures, published by Igloo. (Authors unnamed, but it's a teen's book). They started with Eryops, then moved on to Gerrothorax. This book doesn't mention the first time that bones of any amphibian, dinosaur or so on were found, so I conduct research, starting first with Wikipedia. That worked with Eryops, but was useless for Gerrorthorax. But I can't find out anything on the web about when this creature was first discovered. There were some news articles about it in 2008, but it's listed in Palmer, D., ed 1999 book: The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals. London: Marshall Editions
Gerrothorax ("Wicker Chest") is an extinct genus of temnospondyl amphibian from the Triassic period, found in Greenland.
"Gerrothorax is one of a group of odd amphibians called plagiosaurs with no modern descendants that vanished along with numerous other species 200 million years ago in a mass extinction at the end of the Triassic Period. Its fossils were found in the Fleming Fjord Formation of east Greenland." (Reuters, Ancient armored amphibian had world's oddest bite)
Gerrothorax was about 1 metre (3.3 ft) long, and had a remarkably flattened body. It probably hid under sand or mud on river and lake bottoms, scanning for prey with its large, upward-facing eyes. Gerrothorax had an unusually shaped skull with angular protrusions on the sides. This looked vaguely similar to the skull of the earlier, unrelated, amphibian Diplocaulus, but was not so developed.
Fossils have shown that Gerrothorax was pedomorphic, retaining its larval gills as an adult. This is also seen in some modern-day salamanders, such as the mudpuppy, the axolotl, and the olm. Gerrothorax had three pairs of external gills allowing it to breathe under water.
A 2008 study showed that Gerrothorax lifted its head rather than dropping its jaw when catching prey, which has been compared to how a toilet seat opens.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
1877: Eryops - Amphibian
Eryops meaning "drawn-out face" because most of its skull was in front of its eyes (Greek eryein = drawn-out + ops = face) is a genus of extinct, semi-aquatic amphibian.
Discovery
Fossils have been found primarily in the Lower Permian-aged Admiral Formation (about 295 million years ago) of Archer County, Texas, but fossils have also been found in New Mexico and parts of the eastern United States.
Eryops averaged a little over 1.5-2.0 meters (5-6 ft) long, making it one of the largest land animals of its time. It weighed about 90 kilograms (200 lb). It probably had few predators though it would have likely been an easy target for a predator like Dimetrodon which was larger and was likely the apex predator at the time. Several complete skeletons of Eryops have been found in the Lower Permian, but skull plates and teeth are the most common fossils. Although it had no direct descendants, it is the best-known Permian amphibian and a remarkable example of natural engineering.
Eryops is an example of an animal that made successful adaptations in the movement from a water environment to a terrestrial one. It retained, and refined, most of the traits found in its fish ancestors. Sturdy limbs supported and transported its body while out of water. A thicker, stronger backbone prevented its body from sagging under its own weight. Also, by utilizing vestigial fish jaw bones, a rudimentary ear was developed, allowing Eryops to hear airborne sound.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Who is Othniel Charles Marsh?
Othniel Charles Marsh, M.A., Ph.D., LL.D., (October 29, 1831 – March 18, 1899) was one of the pre-eminent paleontologists of the 19th century, who discovered and named many fossils found in the American West.
Biography
Early life
Marsh was born in Lockport, New York, in the United States into a family of modest means. However, he was the nephew of the very wealthy banker and philanthropist, George Peabody. He graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover in 1856 and Yale College in 1860.
He later studied geology and mineralogy in the Sheffield Scientific School, New Haven, and afterwards paleontology and anatomy in Berlin, Heidelberg and Breslau. He returned to the United States in 1866 and was appointed professor of vertebrate paleontology at Yale University. He persuaded his uncle George Peabody to establish the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale.
Career
Marsh and his many fossil hunters were able to uncover about 500 new species of fossil animals, which were all named later by Marsh himself. In May 1871, Marsh uncovered the first pterosaur fossils found in America. He also found early horses, flying reptiles, the Cretaceous and Jurassic dinosaurs; Apatosaurus and Allosaurus, and described the toothed birds of the Cretaceous; Ichthyornis and Hesperornis.
Marsh is also notable for his "Evolution of Horses" theory, which began to be modified only in the 1950s. (Crationists will try to say that the entire "Evolution of Horses" theory has been discredited, but this is not the case. It, like the theory of evolution itself, has only evolved as more fossils have been found.)
Marsh is also known for the Bone Wars waged against Edward Drinker Cope. The two men were fiercely competitive, discovering and documenting more than 120 new species of dinosaur between them. Marsh eventually won the Bone Wars by finding 80 new species of dinosaur, while Cope only found 56.
Death
Marsh died at 9:55am on March 18, 1899. He was interred at the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.
Legacy
Marsh named the following dinosaur genera:
Allosaurus (1877),
Ammosaurus (1890),
Anchisaurus (1885),
Apatosaurus (1877),
Atlantosaurus (1877),
Barosaurus (1890),
Camptosaurus (1885),
Ceratops (1888),
Ceratosaurus (1884),
Claosaurus (1890),
Coelurus (1879),
Creosaurus (1878),
Diplodocus (1878),
Diracodon (1881),
Dryosaurus (1894),
Dryptosaurus (1877),
Labrosaurus (1896),
Laosaurus (1878),
Nanosaurus (1877),
Nodosaurus (1889),
Ornithomimus (1890),
Pleurocoelus (1891),
Priconodon (1888),
Stegosaurus (1877),
Torosaurus (1891),
Triceratops (1889),
Tripriodon (1889).
He named the suborders
Ceratopsia (1890),
Ceratosauria (1884),
Ornithopoda (1881),
Stegosauria (1877), and
Theropoda.
He also named the families
Allosauridae (1878),
Anchisauridae (1885),
Camptosauridae (1885),
Ceratopsidae (1890),
Ceratosauridae (1884),
Coeluridae (1884),
Diplodocidae (1884),
Dryptosauridae (1890),
Nodosauridae (1890),
Ornithomimidae (1890),
Plateosauridae (1895),
and Stegosauridae (1880).
He also named many individual species of dinosaurs.
The dinosaur Othnielia was named in 1977 by P. Galton as a tribute to Marsh, as was Marshosaurus bicentesmus (Madsen, 1976).
Marsh's finds formed the original core of the collection of Yale's Peabody Museum. The museum's Great Hall is dominated by the first fossil skeleton of Apatosaurus that he discovered (but called "Brontosaurus", unaware that this particular dinosaur had been discovered previously. Apatosaurus is now the official name, but most people ocntinue to call it a brontosaurus).
He donated his home in New Haven, Connecticut, to Yale University in 1899. The Othniel C. Marsh House, now known as Marsh Hall, is designated a National Historic Landmark. The grounds are now known as the Marsh Botanical Garden.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Edward Drinker Cope pt 4
After Cope's Death
The coffin was loaded on a hearse and carried to a gathering at Fairfield; much of the gathering was spent in silence. After the coffin was removed, the assembled began talking. Frazer recalled that each person remembered Cope differently, and that "Few men succeeded so well in concealing from anyone ... all the sides of his multiform character."
Osborn, intending to follow the coffin to the graveyard, was instead pulled aside by Collins and taken to the reading of Cope's will—Osborn and Cope's brother-in-law John Garrett were named executors. Cope gave his family a choice of his books, with the remainder to be sold or donated to the University of Pennsylvania. After debts were handled, Cope left small bequests to friends and family—Anna Brown and Julia received $5000 each, while the remainder went to Annie.
Cope's estate was valued at $75,327, not including additional revenue raised by sales of fossils to the American Museum of Natural History, for a total of $84,600. Some specimens preserved in alcohol made their way to the Academy of Natural Sciences, including a few gordian worms.
Cope insisted through his will that there be no graveside service or burial; he had donated his body to science. He issued a final challenge to Marsh at his death: he had his skull donated to science so that his brain could be measured, hoping that his brain would be larger than that of his adversary; at the time, it was thought that brain size was the true measure of intelligence. Marsh never accepted the challenge, and Cope's skull is reportedly still preserved at the University of Pennsylvania. His ashes were placed at the institute with those of his Leidy, while his bones were extracted and kept in a locked drawer to be studied by anatomy students.
Osborn listed Cope's cause of death as uremic poisoning, combined with a large prostate, but the true cause of death is unknown. Many believed that Cope had died of syphilis contracted from the women with whom he fraternized during his travels. In 1995 Davidson gained permission to have the skeleton examined by a medical doctor at the university. Dr. Morrie Kricun, a professor of radiology, concluded that there was no evidence of bony syphilis on Cope's skeleton.
Public mentions of Cope's passing were relatively slight. The Naturalist ran four photographs, a six-page obituary by editor J.S. Kingsley, and a two-page remembrance by Frazer. The National Academy of Sciences' official memoir was submitted years later and written by Osborn. The American Journal of Science devoted six paragraphs to Cope's passing, and incorrectly gave his age as 46. Cope was survived by his rival Marsh, who was suffering poor health.
Personality and legacy
One of the last photographs taken of Cope (third from right), during his attendance at the 1896 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Buffalo.[115]Julia assisted Osborn in writing a biography of her father, titled Cope: Master Naturalist. She would not comment on the name of the woman with whom her father had had an affair with prior to his first European travel. It is believed that Julia burned any of the scandalous letters and journals that Cope had kept but many of his friends were able to give their recollections of the scandalous nature of some of Cope's unpublished routines. Charles R. Knight, a former friend called, "Cope's mouth the filthiest, from hearsay that in [Cope's] heyday no woman was safe within five miles of him."
As Julia was the major financier behind The Master Naturalist, she wanted to keep her father's name in good standing and refused to comment on any misdeeds her father may have committed.
Cope was described by zoologist Henry Weed Fowler as "a man of medium height and build, but always impressive with his great energy and activity". To him, Fowler wrote, "[Cope] was both genial and always interesting, easily approachable, and both kindly and helpful." His self-taught nature, however, meant that he was largely hostile to bureaucracy and politics. He had a famous temper; one friend called Cope a "militant paleontologist". Despite his faults, he was generally well-liked by his contemporaries. American paleontologist Alfred Romer wrote that, "[Cope's] little slips from virtue were those we might make ourselves, were we bolder".
Cope was raised as a Quaker, and was taught that the Bible was literal truth. Although he never confronted his family about their religious views, Osborn writes that Cope was at least aware of the conflict between his scientific career and his religion. Osborn writes: "If Edward harbored intellectual doubts about the literalness of the Bible ... he did not express them in his letters to his family but there can be little question ... that he shared the intellectual unrest of the period."
Lanham writes that Cope's religious fervor (which seems to have subsided after his father's death) was embarrassing to even his devout Quaker associates.[121] Biographer Jane Davidson believes that Osborn overstated Cope's internal religious conflicts. She ascribes Cope's deference to his father's beliefs as an act of respect or a measure to retain his father's financial support. Frazer's reminiscences about his friend suggest that Cope often told people what they wanted to hear, rather than Cope's true views.
As a young man, Cope read Charles Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist, which had little effect on him. The only comment about Darwin's book recorded by Cope was that Darwin discussed "too much geology" from the account of his voyage. Due to his background in taxonomy and paleontology, Cope focused on evolution in terms of changing structure, rather than emphasizing geography and variation within populations as Darwin had. Over his lifetime Cope's views on evolution shifted.
His original view, described in the paper "On the Origin of Genera" (1868), held that while Darwin's natural selection may affect the preservation of superficial characteristics in organisms, natural selection alone could not explain the formation of genera. Cope's suggested mechanism for this action was a "steady progressive development of organization" through what Cope termed "a continual crowding backward of the successive steps of individual development". In Cope's view, during embryological development an organism could complete their growth with a new stage of development beyond its parents, taking it to a higher level of organization.
Later individuals would inherit this new level of development—thus evolution was a continuous advance of organization, sometimes slowly and other times suddenly; this view is known as the law of acceleration.[128] Cope's beliefs later evolved to one with an increased emphasis on continual and utilitarian evolution with less involvement of a Creator.
He became one of the founders of the Neo-Lamarckism school of thought, which holds that individuals can pass on traits acquired in its lifetime to offspring. Although the view has been shown incorrect, it was the prevalent theory among paleontologists in Cope's time.
In 1887, Cope published his own "Origin of the Fittest: Essays in Evolution", detailing his views on the subject. He was a strong believer in the law of use and disuse—that an individual will slowly, over time, favor an anatomical part of its body so much that it will become stronger and larger as time progresses down the generations. The giraffe, for example, stretched its neck to reach taller trees and passed this acquired characteristic to its offspring in the new developmental phase that is added on to the fetus in the womb. This new stage of sharing of genetics would be added on after all gestation is completed and the offspring is ready to be conceived.
In fewer than 40 years as a scientist Cope published over 1,400 scientific papers, a record that stands to this day. These include three major volumes: On the Origin of Genera (1867), The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West (1884) and Essays in Evolution.
He discovered a total of 56 new dinosaur species during the Bone Wars compared to Marsh's 80. Although Cope is today known as a herpetologist and paleontologist, his contributions extended to ichthyology, in which he catalogued 300 species of fishes over three decades. In total he discovered and described over 1,000 species of fossil vertebrates and published 600 separate titles.
The coffin was loaded on a hearse and carried to a gathering at Fairfield; much of the gathering was spent in silence. After the coffin was removed, the assembled began talking. Frazer recalled that each person remembered Cope differently, and that "Few men succeeded so well in concealing from anyone ... all the sides of his multiform character."
Osborn, intending to follow the coffin to the graveyard, was instead pulled aside by Collins and taken to the reading of Cope's will—Osborn and Cope's brother-in-law John Garrett were named executors. Cope gave his family a choice of his books, with the remainder to be sold or donated to the University of Pennsylvania. After debts were handled, Cope left small bequests to friends and family—Anna Brown and Julia received $5000 each, while the remainder went to Annie.
Cope's estate was valued at $75,327, not including additional revenue raised by sales of fossils to the American Museum of Natural History, for a total of $84,600. Some specimens preserved in alcohol made their way to the Academy of Natural Sciences, including a few gordian worms.
Cope insisted through his will that there be no graveside service or burial; he had donated his body to science. He issued a final challenge to Marsh at his death: he had his skull donated to science so that his brain could be measured, hoping that his brain would be larger than that of his adversary; at the time, it was thought that brain size was the true measure of intelligence. Marsh never accepted the challenge, and Cope's skull is reportedly still preserved at the University of Pennsylvania. His ashes were placed at the institute with those of his Leidy, while his bones were extracted and kept in a locked drawer to be studied by anatomy students.
Osborn listed Cope's cause of death as uremic poisoning, combined with a large prostate, but the true cause of death is unknown. Many believed that Cope had died of syphilis contracted from the women with whom he fraternized during his travels. In 1995 Davidson gained permission to have the skeleton examined by a medical doctor at the university. Dr. Morrie Kricun, a professor of radiology, concluded that there was no evidence of bony syphilis on Cope's skeleton.
Public mentions of Cope's passing were relatively slight. The Naturalist ran four photographs, a six-page obituary by editor J.S. Kingsley, and a two-page remembrance by Frazer. The National Academy of Sciences' official memoir was submitted years later and written by Osborn. The American Journal of Science devoted six paragraphs to Cope's passing, and incorrectly gave his age as 46. Cope was survived by his rival Marsh, who was suffering poor health.
Personality and legacy
One of the last photographs taken of Cope (third from right), during his attendance at the 1896 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Buffalo.[115]Julia assisted Osborn in writing a biography of her father, titled Cope: Master Naturalist. She would not comment on the name of the woman with whom her father had had an affair with prior to his first European travel. It is believed that Julia burned any of the scandalous letters and journals that Cope had kept but many of his friends were able to give their recollections of the scandalous nature of some of Cope's unpublished routines. Charles R. Knight, a former friend called, "Cope's mouth the filthiest, from hearsay that in [Cope's] heyday no woman was safe within five miles of him."
As Julia was the major financier behind The Master Naturalist, she wanted to keep her father's name in good standing and refused to comment on any misdeeds her father may have committed.
Cope was described by zoologist Henry Weed Fowler as "a man of medium height and build, but always impressive with his great energy and activity". To him, Fowler wrote, "[Cope] was both genial and always interesting, easily approachable, and both kindly and helpful." His self-taught nature, however, meant that he was largely hostile to bureaucracy and politics. He had a famous temper; one friend called Cope a "militant paleontologist". Despite his faults, he was generally well-liked by his contemporaries. American paleontologist Alfred Romer wrote that, "[Cope's] little slips from virtue were those we might make ourselves, were we bolder".
Cope was raised as a Quaker, and was taught that the Bible was literal truth. Although he never confronted his family about their religious views, Osborn writes that Cope was at least aware of the conflict between his scientific career and his religion. Osborn writes: "If Edward harbored intellectual doubts about the literalness of the Bible ... he did not express them in his letters to his family but there can be little question ... that he shared the intellectual unrest of the period."
Lanham writes that Cope's religious fervor (which seems to have subsided after his father's death) was embarrassing to even his devout Quaker associates.[121] Biographer Jane Davidson believes that Osborn overstated Cope's internal religious conflicts. She ascribes Cope's deference to his father's beliefs as an act of respect or a measure to retain his father's financial support. Frazer's reminiscences about his friend suggest that Cope often told people what they wanted to hear, rather than Cope's true views.
As a young man, Cope read Charles Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist, which had little effect on him. The only comment about Darwin's book recorded by Cope was that Darwin discussed "too much geology" from the account of his voyage. Due to his background in taxonomy and paleontology, Cope focused on evolution in terms of changing structure, rather than emphasizing geography and variation within populations as Darwin had. Over his lifetime Cope's views on evolution shifted.
His original view, described in the paper "On the Origin of Genera" (1868), held that while Darwin's natural selection may affect the preservation of superficial characteristics in organisms, natural selection alone could not explain the formation of genera. Cope's suggested mechanism for this action was a "steady progressive development of organization" through what Cope termed "a continual crowding backward of the successive steps of individual development". In Cope's view, during embryological development an organism could complete their growth with a new stage of development beyond its parents, taking it to a higher level of organization.
Later individuals would inherit this new level of development—thus evolution was a continuous advance of organization, sometimes slowly and other times suddenly; this view is known as the law of acceleration.[128] Cope's beliefs later evolved to one with an increased emphasis on continual and utilitarian evolution with less involvement of a Creator.
He became one of the founders of the Neo-Lamarckism school of thought, which holds that individuals can pass on traits acquired in its lifetime to offspring. Although the view has been shown incorrect, it was the prevalent theory among paleontologists in Cope's time.
In 1887, Cope published his own "Origin of the Fittest: Essays in Evolution", detailing his views on the subject. He was a strong believer in the law of use and disuse—that an individual will slowly, over time, favor an anatomical part of its body so much that it will become stronger and larger as time progresses down the generations. The giraffe, for example, stretched its neck to reach taller trees and passed this acquired characteristic to its offspring in the new developmental phase that is added on to the fetus in the womb. This new stage of sharing of genetics would be added on after all gestation is completed and the offspring is ready to be conceived.
In fewer than 40 years as a scientist Cope published over 1,400 scientific papers, a record that stands to this day. These include three major volumes: On the Origin of Genera (1867), The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West (1884) and Essays in Evolution.
He discovered a total of 56 new dinosaur species during the Bone Wars compared to Marsh's 80. Although Cope is today known as a herpetologist and paleontologist, his contributions extended to ichthyology, in which he catalogued 300 species of fishes over three decades. In total he discovered and described over 1,000 species of fossil vertebrates and published 600 separate titles.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Edward Drinker Cope pt 3
Bone Wars
Cope's relations with Marsh turned into a competition for fossils between the two, known today as the "Bone Wars." The conflict's seeds began upon the men's return to the United States in the 1860s. Cope introduced his colleague to the marl pit owner Albert Vorhees when the two visited the site. Marsh went behind Cope's back and made a private agreement with Vorhees: any fossils that Vorhees's men found were sent back to Marsh at New Haven.
When Marsh was at Haddonfield examining one of Cope's fossil finds—a complete skeleton of a large aquatic plesiosaur, Elasmosaurus, that had four flippers and a long neck—he commented that the fossil's head was on the wrong end, evidently stating that Cope had put the skull at the end of the vertebra of the tail. Cope was outraged and the two argued for some time until they agreed to have Leidy examine the bones and determine who was right. Leidy came, picked up the head of the fossil and put it on the other end.
Cope was horrified since he had already published a paper on the fossil with the error at the American Philosophical Society. He immediately tried to buy back the copies, but some remained with their buyers (Marsh and Leidy kept theirs). The whole ordeal might have passed easily enough had Leidy not exposed the cover-up at the next society meeting, not to alienate Cope but only in response to Cope's brief statement where he never admitted he was wrong. Cope and Marsh would never talk to each other amicably again, and by 1873 open hostility had broken out between them.
The rivalry between the two increased towards the latter half of the 1870s. In 1877, Marsh received a letter from Arthur Lakes, a schoolteacher in Golden, Colorado. Lakes had been hiking in the mountains near the town of Morrison with his friend, H. C. Beckwith, looking for fossilized leaves in the Dakota sandstone. Instead the pair found large bones embedded in the rock.[64] Lakes wrote that the bones were "apparently a vertebra and a humerus bone of some gigantic saurian."
While Lakes sent Marsh some 1,500 pounds of bone, he also sent Cope some of the specimens. Marsh published his finds first, and having been paid $100 for the finds Lakes wrote to Cope that the samples should be forwarded to Marsh. Cope was offended by the slight. Meanwhile Cope received bones from school superintendent O.W. Lucas in March 1877 from Canon City; the remains were of a dinosaur even bigger than Lakes' that Marsh had described.
Word that Lakes had notified Cope of his finds galvanized Marsh into action. When Marsh heard from Union Pacific Railroad workers W.E. Carlin and W.H. Reed about a vast boneyard northwest of Laramie in Como Bluff, Marsh sent his agent, Samuel Wendell Williston, to take charge of the digging. Cope, in response, learned of Carlin and Reed's discoveries and sent his own men to find bones in the area. The two scientists attempted to sabotage each other's progress. Cope was described as a genius and what Marsh lacked in intelligence, he easily made up for in connections—Marsh's uncle was George Peabody, a rich banker who supported Marsh with money, and a secure position at the Peabody Museum.
Marsh lobbied John Wesley Powell to act against Cope and attempted to persuade Hayden to "muzzle" Cope's publishing. Both men tried to spy on the other's whereabouts and attempted to offer their collectors more money in the hopes of recruiting them to their own side. Cope was able to recruit David Baldwin in New Mexico and Frank Williston in Wyoming from Marsh. Cope and Marsh were extremely secretive as to the source of their fossils. When Osborn, at the time a student at Princeton, visited Cope to ask where to travel to look for fossils in the West, Cope politely refused to answer.
When Cope arrived back in the United States after his tour of Europe in 1878, he had nearly two years of fossil findings from Lucas. Among these dinosaurs was Camarasaurus, one of the most recognizable dinosaur recreations of the time. The summer of 1879 took Cope to Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and north to Oregon, where he was amazed at the rich flora and the blueness of the Pacific Ocean. In 1879 the United States Congress consolidated the various government survey teams into the United States Geological Survey with Clarence King as its leader. This was discouraging to Cope because King named Marsh, an old college friend, as the chief paleontologist. The period of Cope's and Marsh's paleontological digs in the American West spanned from 1877 to 1892, by which time both men exhausted much of their financial resources.[
Later years
The 1880s proved disastrous for Cope. Marsh's close association with the Geological Survey gave him the resources to employ 54 staff members over the course of ten years. His teaching position at Yale meant he had guaranteed access to the American Journal of Science for publication.
Cope had his interest in the Naturalist, but it drained him of funds. After Hayden was removed from the Survey, Cope lost his source of government funding. His fortune was not enough to support his rivalry, so Cope invested in mining. Most of his properties were silver mines in New Mexico; one mine yielded an ore vein worth $3 million in silver chloride. Cope visited the mines each summer from 1881 to 1885, taking the opportunity to supervise or collect other minerals.
For a while he made good money, but the mines stopped producing and by 1886 he had to give up his now-worthless stocks. The same year he received a teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania. He continued to travel west, but realized he would not be able to best Marsh in cornering the market for bones; he had to release the collectors he had hired and sell his collections. During this period he published 40 to 75 papers each year.
With the failure of his mines, Cope began searching for a job, but was turned down at the Smithsonian and American Museum of Natural History. He turned to giving lectures for hire and writing magazine articles. Each year he lobbied Congress for an appropriation with which to finish his work on "Cope's Bible", a volume on Tertiary vertebrates, but was continually turned down. Rather than work with Powell and the Survey, Cope tried to inflame sentiment against them.
At Marsh's urging, Powell pushed for Cope to return specimens he had unearthed during his employment under the government surveys. This was an outrage to Cope, who had used his own money while working as a volunteer. In response, Cope went to the editor of the New York Herald and promised a scandalous headline.
Since 1885, Cope had kept an elaborate journal of mistakes and misdeeds that both Marsh and Powell had committed over the years. From scientific errors to publishing mistakes, he had them written down in a journal that he kept in the bottom drawer of his Pine Street desk.
Cope sought out Marsh's assistants, who complained of being denied access and credit by their employer and of being chronically underpaid. Reporter William Hosea Ballou ran the first article on January 12, 1890, in what would become a series of newspaper debates between Marsh, Powell and Cope.
Cope attacked Marsh for plagiarism and financial mismanagement, and attacked Powell for his geological classification errors and misspending of government-allocated funds. Marsh and Powell published their own side of the story and, in the end, little changed. No congressional hearing was created to investigate Powell's alleged misallocation of funds, while Cope and Marsh were not held responsible for any mistakes. Indirectly, however, the attacks may have been influential in Marsh's fall from power in the Survey.
Due to pressure from Powell over bad press, Marsh was removed from his position for the government surveys. Cope's relations with the president of the University of Pennsylvania soured, and the entire funding for paleontology in the government surveys was pulled.
Cope took his sinking fortunes in stride. In writing to Osborn about the articles, he laughed at the outcome, saying, "It will now rest largely with you whether or not I am supposed to be a liar and am actuated by jealousy and disappointment. I think Marsh is impaled on the horns of Monoclonius sphenocerus."
Cope was well aware of his enemies and was carefree enough to name a species after a combination of "Cope" and "hater", Anisonchus cophater. Through his years of financial hardship he was able to continue publishing papers—his most productive years were 1884 and 1885, with 79 and 62 papers published, respectively. The 1880s marked the publication of two of the best-known fossil taxa described by Cope: the pelycosaur Edaphosaurus in 1882 and the early dinosaur Coelophysis in 1889. In 1889 he succeeded Leidy, who had died the previous year, as professor of zoology at the University of Pennsylvania. The small yearly stipend was enough for Cope's family to move back into one of the townhouses he had been forced to relinquish earlier.
In 1892, Cope (then 52 years old) was granted expense money for field work from the Texas Geological Survey.[95] With his finances improved, he was able to publish a massive work on the Batrachians of North America, which was the most detailed analysis and organization of the continent's frogs and amphibians ever mastered, and the 1,115-page The Crocodilians Lizards and Snakes of North America.
In the 1890s his publication rate increased to an average of 43 articles a year. His final expedition to the West took place in 1894, when he prospected for dinosaurs in South Dakota and visited sights in Texas and Oklahoma. The same year, Julia was married to William H. Collins, a Haverford astronomy professor. The couple's ages—Julia was 28 and the groom 35—were past the conventions of Victorian marriage. After their European honeymoon, the couple returned to Haverford. While Annie moved to Haverford as well, Cope did not. His official reason was the long commute and late lectures he gave in Philadelphia. In private correspondence, however, Osborn wrote that the two had essentially separated, though they remained on amiable terms.
Cope sold his collections to the American Museum of Natural History in 1895; his set of 10,000 American fossil mammals sold for $32,000, lower than Cope's asking price of $50,000. The purchase was financed by the donations from New York's high society.
Cope sold three other collections for $29,000. While his collection contained more than 13,000 specimens, Cope's fossil hoard was still much smaller than Marsh's collection, valued at over a million dollars. The University of Pennsylvania bought part of Cope's ethnological artifact collection for $5,500. The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia's foremost museum, did not bid on any of Cope's sales due to bad blood between Cope and the museum's leaders; as a result, many of Cope's major finds left the city. Cope's proceeds from the sales allowed him to rehire Sternberg to prospect for fossils on his behalf.
Death
In 1896 Cope began suffering from a gastrointestinal illness he said was cystitis.
His wife cared for him in Philadelphia when she was able; at other times, Cope's university secretary, Anna Brown, tended to him. Cope at this time lived in his Pine Street museum and rested on a cot surrounded by his fossil finds. Cope often prescribed himself medications, including large amounts of morphine, belladonna, and formalin, a substance based on formaldehyde used to preserve specimens. Osborn was horrified by Cope's actions and made arrangements for surgery, but the plans were put on hold after a temporary improvement in Cope's health.
Cope went to Virginia looking for fossils, became ill again, and returned to his home very weak.Osborn visited Cope on April 5, inquiring about Cope's health, but the sick paleontologist pressed his friend for his views on the origin of mammals. Word of Cope's illness spread, and he was visited by friends and colleagues; even in a feverish condition Cope delivered lectures from his bed. Cope died on April 12, 1897, sixteen weeks short of his 57th birthday.
Sternberg, still prospecting for Cope that spring, was woken by a liveryman who relayed word from Annie that Cope had died three days earlier. Sternberg wrote in his memoirs that "I had lost friends before, and I had known what it was to bury my own dead, even my firstborn son, but I had never sorrowed more deeply than I did over the news."
Cope's Quaker funeral consisted of six men: Osborn, his fellow colleague William Berryman Scott, Cope's friend Persifor Frazer, son-in-law Collins, Horatio Wood and Harrison Allen. The six sat around Cope's coffin among the fossils and Cope's pets, a tortoise and a gila monster, for what Osborn called "a perfect Quaker silence ... an interminable length of time."[105][106] Anticipating the quiet, Osborn had brought along a Bible and read an excerpt from the Book of Job, ending by saying, "These are the problems to which our friend devoted his life."
Cope's relations with Marsh turned into a competition for fossils between the two, known today as the "Bone Wars." The conflict's seeds began upon the men's return to the United States in the 1860s. Cope introduced his colleague to the marl pit owner Albert Vorhees when the two visited the site. Marsh went behind Cope's back and made a private agreement with Vorhees: any fossils that Vorhees's men found were sent back to Marsh at New Haven.
When Marsh was at Haddonfield examining one of Cope's fossil finds—a complete skeleton of a large aquatic plesiosaur, Elasmosaurus, that had four flippers and a long neck—he commented that the fossil's head was on the wrong end, evidently stating that Cope had put the skull at the end of the vertebra of the tail. Cope was outraged and the two argued for some time until they agreed to have Leidy examine the bones and determine who was right. Leidy came, picked up the head of the fossil and put it on the other end.
Cope was horrified since he had already published a paper on the fossil with the error at the American Philosophical Society. He immediately tried to buy back the copies, but some remained with their buyers (Marsh and Leidy kept theirs). The whole ordeal might have passed easily enough had Leidy not exposed the cover-up at the next society meeting, not to alienate Cope but only in response to Cope's brief statement where he never admitted he was wrong. Cope and Marsh would never talk to each other amicably again, and by 1873 open hostility had broken out between them.
The rivalry between the two increased towards the latter half of the 1870s. In 1877, Marsh received a letter from Arthur Lakes, a schoolteacher in Golden, Colorado. Lakes had been hiking in the mountains near the town of Morrison with his friend, H. C. Beckwith, looking for fossilized leaves in the Dakota sandstone. Instead the pair found large bones embedded in the rock.[64] Lakes wrote that the bones were "apparently a vertebra and a humerus bone of some gigantic saurian."
While Lakes sent Marsh some 1,500 pounds of bone, he also sent Cope some of the specimens. Marsh published his finds first, and having been paid $100 for the finds Lakes wrote to Cope that the samples should be forwarded to Marsh. Cope was offended by the slight. Meanwhile Cope received bones from school superintendent O.W. Lucas in March 1877 from Canon City; the remains were of a dinosaur even bigger than Lakes' that Marsh had described.
Word that Lakes had notified Cope of his finds galvanized Marsh into action. When Marsh heard from Union Pacific Railroad workers W.E. Carlin and W.H. Reed about a vast boneyard northwest of Laramie in Como Bluff, Marsh sent his agent, Samuel Wendell Williston, to take charge of the digging. Cope, in response, learned of Carlin and Reed's discoveries and sent his own men to find bones in the area. The two scientists attempted to sabotage each other's progress. Cope was described as a genius and what Marsh lacked in intelligence, he easily made up for in connections—Marsh's uncle was George Peabody, a rich banker who supported Marsh with money, and a secure position at the Peabody Museum.
Marsh lobbied John Wesley Powell to act against Cope and attempted to persuade Hayden to "muzzle" Cope's publishing. Both men tried to spy on the other's whereabouts and attempted to offer their collectors more money in the hopes of recruiting them to their own side. Cope was able to recruit David Baldwin in New Mexico and Frank Williston in Wyoming from Marsh. Cope and Marsh were extremely secretive as to the source of their fossils. When Osborn, at the time a student at Princeton, visited Cope to ask where to travel to look for fossils in the West, Cope politely refused to answer.
When Cope arrived back in the United States after his tour of Europe in 1878, he had nearly two years of fossil findings from Lucas. Among these dinosaurs was Camarasaurus, one of the most recognizable dinosaur recreations of the time. The summer of 1879 took Cope to Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and north to Oregon, where he was amazed at the rich flora and the blueness of the Pacific Ocean. In 1879 the United States Congress consolidated the various government survey teams into the United States Geological Survey with Clarence King as its leader. This was discouraging to Cope because King named Marsh, an old college friend, as the chief paleontologist. The period of Cope's and Marsh's paleontological digs in the American West spanned from 1877 to 1892, by which time both men exhausted much of their financial resources.[
Later years
The 1880s proved disastrous for Cope. Marsh's close association with the Geological Survey gave him the resources to employ 54 staff members over the course of ten years. His teaching position at Yale meant he had guaranteed access to the American Journal of Science for publication.
Cope had his interest in the Naturalist, but it drained him of funds. After Hayden was removed from the Survey, Cope lost his source of government funding. His fortune was not enough to support his rivalry, so Cope invested in mining. Most of his properties were silver mines in New Mexico; one mine yielded an ore vein worth $3 million in silver chloride. Cope visited the mines each summer from 1881 to 1885, taking the opportunity to supervise or collect other minerals.
For a while he made good money, but the mines stopped producing and by 1886 he had to give up his now-worthless stocks. The same year he received a teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania. He continued to travel west, but realized he would not be able to best Marsh in cornering the market for bones; he had to release the collectors he had hired and sell his collections. During this period he published 40 to 75 papers each year.
With the failure of his mines, Cope began searching for a job, but was turned down at the Smithsonian and American Museum of Natural History. He turned to giving lectures for hire and writing magazine articles. Each year he lobbied Congress for an appropriation with which to finish his work on "Cope's Bible", a volume on Tertiary vertebrates, but was continually turned down. Rather than work with Powell and the Survey, Cope tried to inflame sentiment against them.
At Marsh's urging, Powell pushed for Cope to return specimens he had unearthed during his employment under the government surveys. This was an outrage to Cope, who had used his own money while working as a volunteer. In response, Cope went to the editor of the New York Herald and promised a scandalous headline.
Since 1885, Cope had kept an elaborate journal of mistakes and misdeeds that both Marsh and Powell had committed over the years. From scientific errors to publishing mistakes, he had them written down in a journal that he kept in the bottom drawer of his Pine Street desk.
Cope sought out Marsh's assistants, who complained of being denied access and credit by their employer and of being chronically underpaid. Reporter William Hosea Ballou ran the first article on January 12, 1890, in what would become a series of newspaper debates between Marsh, Powell and Cope.
Cope attacked Marsh for plagiarism and financial mismanagement, and attacked Powell for his geological classification errors and misspending of government-allocated funds. Marsh and Powell published their own side of the story and, in the end, little changed. No congressional hearing was created to investigate Powell's alleged misallocation of funds, while Cope and Marsh were not held responsible for any mistakes. Indirectly, however, the attacks may have been influential in Marsh's fall from power in the Survey.
Due to pressure from Powell over bad press, Marsh was removed from his position for the government surveys. Cope's relations with the president of the University of Pennsylvania soured, and the entire funding for paleontology in the government surveys was pulled.
Cope took his sinking fortunes in stride. In writing to Osborn about the articles, he laughed at the outcome, saying, "It will now rest largely with you whether or not I am supposed to be a liar and am actuated by jealousy and disappointment. I think Marsh is impaled on the horns of Monoclonius sphenocerus."
Cope was well aware of his enemies and was carefree enough to name a species after a combination of "Cope" and "hater", Anisonchus cophater. Through his years of financial hardship he was able to continue publishing papers—his most productive years were 1884 and 1885, with 79 and 62 papers published, respectively. The 1880s marked the publication of two of the best-known fossil taxa described by Cope: the pelycosaur Edaphosaurus in 1882 and the early dinosaur Coelophysis in 1889. In 1889 he succeeded Leidy, who had died the previous year, as professor of zoology at the University of Pennsylvania. The small yearly stipend was enough for Cope's family to move back into one of the townhouses he had been forced to relinquish earlier.
In 1892, Cope (then 52 years old) was granted expense money for field work from the Texas Geological Survey.[95] With his finances improved, he was able to publish a massive work on the Batrachians of North America, which was the most detailed analysis and organization of the continent's frogs and amphibians ever mastered, and the 1,115-page The Crocodilians Lizards and Snakes of North America.
In the 1890s his publication rate increased to an average of 43 articles a year. His final expedition to the West took place in 1894, when he prospected for dinosaurs in South Dakota and visited sights in Texas and Oklahoma. The same year, Julia was married to William H. Collins, a Haverford astronomy professor. The couple's ages—Julia was 28 and the groom 35—were past the conventions of Victorian marriage. After their European honeymoon, the couple returned to Haverford. While Annie moved to Haverford as well, Cope did not. His official reason was the long commute and late lectures he gave in Philadelphia. In private correspondence, however, Osborn wrote that the two had essentially separated, though they remained on amiable terms.
Cope sold his collections to the American Museum of Natural History in 1895; his set of 10,000 American fossil mammals sold for $32,000, lower than Cope's asking price of $50,000. The purchase was financed by the donations from New York's high society.
Cope sold three other collections for $29,000. While his collection contained more than 13,000 specimens, Cope's fossil hoard was still much smaller than Marsh's collection, valued at over a million dollars. The University of Pennsylvania bought part of Cope's ethnological artifact collection for $5,500. The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia's foremost museum, did not bid on any of Cope's sales due to bad blood between Cope and the museum's leaders; as a result, many of Cope's major finds left the city. Cope's proceeds from the sales allowed him to rehire Sternberg to prospect for fossils on his behalf.
Death
In 1896 Cope began suffering from a gastrointestinal illness he said was cystitis.
His wife cared for him in Philadelphia when she was able; at other times, Cope's university secretary, Anna Brown, tended to him. Cope at this time lived in his Pine Street museum and rested on a cot surrounded by his fossil finds. Cope often prescribed himself medications, including large amounts of morphine, belladonna, and formalin, a substance based on formaldehyde used to preserve specimens. Osborn was horrified by Cope's actions and made arrangements for surgery, but the plans were put on hold after a temporary improvement in Cope's health.
Cope went to Virginia looking for fossils, became ill again, and returned to his home very weak.Osborn visited Cope on April 5, inquiring about Cope's health, but the sick paleontologist pressed his friend for his views on the origin of mammals. Word of Cope's illness spread, and he was visited by friends and colleagues; even in a feverish condition Cope delivered lectures from his bed. Cope died on April 12, 1897, sixteen weeks short of his 57th birthday.
Sternberg, still prospecting for Cope that spring, was woken by a liveryman who relayed word from Annie that Cope had died three days earlier. Sternberg wrote in his memoirs that "I had lost friends before, and I had known what it was to bury my own dead, even my firstborn son, but I had never sorrowed more deeply than I did over the news."
Cope's Quaker funeral consisted of six men: Osborn, his fellow colleague William Berryman Scott, Cope's friend Persifor Frazer, son-in-law Collins, Horatio Wood and Harrison Allen. The six sat around Cope's coffin among the fossils and Cope's pets, a tortoise and a gila monster, for what Osborn called "a perfect Quaker silence ... an interminable length of time."[105][106] Anticipating the quiet, Osborn had brought along a Bible and read an excerpt from the Book of Job, ending by saying, "These are the problems to which our friend devoted his life."
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Edward Drinker Cope pt 2
European travels
In 1863–1864 during the American Civil War, Edward traveled through Europe, taking the opportunity to visit the most esteemed museums and societies of the time. Initially, Edward seemed interested in helping out at a field hospital, but in letters to his father later on in the war this aspiration seemed to disappear; instead Edward considered working in the American South to assist freed African-Americans. Davidson suggests that Edward's correspondence with Leidy and Ferdinand Hayden, who worked as field surgeons during the war, might have informed Edward of the horrors of the occupation.
Edward was involved in a love affair; his father did not approve. Whether Edward or the unnamed woman (whom he at one point intended to marry) broke off the relationship is unknown, but he took the breakup poorly.
Biographer and paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn attributed Edward's sudden departure for Europe as a method of keeping him from being drafted into the Civil War. Cope did write to his father from London on February 11, 1864, that, "I shall get home in time to catch and be caught by the new draft. I shall not be sorry for this, as I know certain persons who would be mean enough to say that I have gone to Europe to avoid the war." Eventually Cope took the pragmatic approach and waited out the conflict.[21] He may have suffered from mild depression during this period, and often complained of boredom.
Despite his torpor, Edward proceeded with his tour of Europe, and met with some of the most highly esteemed scientists of the world during his travels through France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Italy, and Eastern Europe, most likely with introductory letters from Leidy and Spencer Baird. In the winter of 1863, Edward met Othniel Charles Marsh while in Berlin. Marsh, age thirty-two, was attending the University of Berlin. He held two university degrees in comparison to Edward's lack of formal schooling past sixteen, but Edward had written 37 scientific papers in comparison to Marsh's two published works.
While they would later become rivals, on meeting the two men appeared to take a liking to each other. Marsh led Edward on a tour of the city, and they stayed together for days. After Edward left Berlin the two maintained correspondence, exchanging manuscripts, fossils, and photographs. Edward burned many of his journals and letters from Europe upon his return to the United States. Friends intervened and stopped Cope from destroying some of his drawings and notes, in what author Url Lanham deemed a "partial suicide".
Family and early career
Upon returning to Philadelphia in 1864 the Cope family made every effort to secure Edward a teaching post as the Professor of Zoology at Haverford College, a small Quaker school where the family had philanthropic ties.
The college awarded him an honorary master's degree so he could have the position. Cope even began to think about marriage and consulted his father in the matter, telling him of the girl he would like to marry: "an amiable woman, not over sensitive, with considerable energy, and especially one inclined to be serious and not inclined to frivolity and display—the more truly Christian of course the better—seems to be the most practically the most suitable for me, though intellect and accomplishments have more charm."
Cope thought of Annie Pim, a member of the Society of Friends, as less a lover than companion, declaring that "her amiability and domestic qualities generally, her capability of taking care of a house, etc., as well as her steady seriousness weigh far more with me than any of the traits which form the theme of poets!" Cope's family approved of his choice, and the marriage took place in July 1865 at Pim's farmhouse in Chester County, Pennsylvania.[30] The two had a single daughter, Julia Biddle Cope, born June 10, 1866.[31] Cope's return to the United States also marked an expansion of his scientific studies; in 1864 he described several fishes, a whale, and the amphibian Amphibamus grandiceps (his first paleontological contribution.)
During the period between 1866 and 1867 Cope went on trips to western parts of the country. Cope related to his father his scientific experiences; to his daughter he sent descriptions of animal life as part of her education. Cope found educating his students at Haverford "a pleasure" but wrote to his father that he "could not get any work done." He resigned from his position at Haverford and moved his family to Haddonfield, in part to be closer to the fossil beds of western New Jersey. Due to the time-consuming nature of his Haverford position Cope had not had time to attend to his farm and had let it out to others, but eventually found he was in need of more money to fuel his scientific habits.
Pleading with his father for money to pursue his career, he finally sold the farm in 1869. Alfred apparently did not press his son to continue farming, and Edward focused on his scientific career. He continued his continental travels, including trips to Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. He visited caves across the region. He stopped these cave explorations after an 1871 trip to the Wyandotte Caves in Indiana, but remained interested in the subject.
Cope had visited Haddonfield many times in the 1860s, paying periodical visits to the marl pits. The fossils he found in these pits became the focus of several papers, including a description in 1868 of Elasmosaurus platyurus and Laelaps. Marsh accompanied him on one of these excursions. Cope's proximity to the beds after moving to Haddonfield made more frequent trips possible. The Copes lived comfortably in a frame house backed by an apple orchard. Two maids tended the estate, which entertained a number of guests. Cope's only concern was for more money to spend on his scientific work.
The 1870s were the golden years of Cope's career, marked by his most prominent discoveries and rapid flow of publications. Among his descriptions were the therapsid Lystrosaurus (1870), the archosauromorph Champsosaurus (1876), and the sauropod Amphicoelias (1878), possibly the largest dinosaur ever discovered. In the period of one year, from 1879 to 1880, Cope published 76 papers based on his travels through New Mexico and Colorado, and on the findings of his collectors in Texas, Kansas Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.
During the peak years, Cope published around 25 reports and preliminary observations each year. The hurried publications led to errors in interpretation and naming—many of his scientific names were later canceled or withdrawn. In comparison, Marsh wrote and published less frequently and more succinctly—his work's appearance in the widespread American Journal of Science led to faster reception abroad, and subsequently Marsh's reputations grew faster than Cope.
In autumn 1871 Cope began prospecting farther west to the fossil fields of Kansas. Leidy and Marsh had been to the region earlier, and Cope employed one of Marsh's guides, Benjamin Mudge, who was in want of a job.
Cope's companion Charles Sternberg described the lack of water and good food available to Cope and his helpers on these expeditions. Cope would suffer from a "severe attack of nightmare" in which "every animal of which we had found trace during the day played with him at night ... sometimes he would lose half the night in this exhausting slumber." Nevertheless Cope continued to lead the party from sunrise to sunset, sending letters to his wife and child describing his finds.[47] The severe desert conditions and Cope's habit of overworking himself till he was bedridden caught up with him and in 1872 he broke down from exhaustion.[48] Cope maintained a regular pattern of summers spent prospecting and winters writing up his findings from 1871 to 1879.
Throughout the decade Cope traveled across the West, exploring rocks of the Eocene in 1872 and the Titanothere Beds of Colorado in 1873. In 1874 Cope was employed with the Wheeler Survey, a group of surveys led by George Montague Wheeler that mapped parts of the United States west of the 100th meridian. The survey traveled through New Mexico, whose Puerco formations, he wrote to his father, provided "the most important find in geology I have ever made".
The New Mexico bluffs contained millions of years of formation and subsequent deformation, and were in an area which had not been visited by Leidy or Marsh. Being part of the survey had other advantages; Cope was able to draw on fort commissaries and defray publishing costs. While there was no salary, his findings would be published in the annual reports that the surveys printed. Cope brought Annie and Julia along on one such survey and rented a house for them at Fort Bridger, but he spent more of his own money on these survey trips than he would have liked.
Cope's father died December 4, 1875, and left Edward with an inheritance of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. His death was a blow to Cope; his father was a constant confidant. The same year marked a suspension of much of Cope's field work and a new emphasis on writing up discoveries of the previous years. His chief publication of the time, The Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations of the West, was a collection of 303 pages and 54 illustration plates. The memoir summarized his experiences prospecting in New Jersey and Kansas. Cope now had the finances to hire multiple teams to search for fossils for him year-round and he advised the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition on their fossil displays. Cope's studies of marine reptiles of Kansas closed in 1876, opening a new focus on terrestrial reptiles.
The same year, Cope moved from Haddonfield to 2100 and 2102 Pine Street in Philadelphia. He converted one of the two houses into a museum where he stored his growing collection of fossils.[49] Cope's expeditions took him across Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana. Cope's initial journey into the Clarendon Beds of Upper Miocene and Lower Pliocene of Texas led to an affiliation with the Geological Survey of Texas. Cope's papers on the region constitute some of his most important paleontological contributions. In 1877 he purchased half the rights to the American Naturalist to publish the papers he produced at a rate so high that Marsh questioned their dating.
Cope returned to Europe in August 1878 in response to an invitation to join the British Association for the Advancement of Science's Dublin meeting. He was warmly welcomed in England and France and met with the distinguished paleontologists and archeologists of the period. Marsh's attempts to sully Cope's reputation had made little impact on anyone save paleontologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who according to Osborn "alone treated [Cope] with coolness".
Following the Dublin meeting, Cope spent two days with the French Association for the Advancement of Science. At each gathering Cope exhibited dinosaur restorations by Philadelphia colleague John A. Ryder and various charts and plates from geological surveys of the 1870s led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. He returned to London on October 12, meeting with anatomist Richard Owen, ichthyologist Hermann Gunther and paleontologist H. G. Seeley. While in Europe Cope purchased a great collection of fossils from Argentina. Cope never found time to describe the collection and many of the boxes remained unopened until Cope's death.[60]
In 1863–1864 during the American Civil War, Edward traveled through Europe, taking the opportunity to visit the most esteemed museums and societies of the time. Initially, Edward seemed interested in helping out at a field hospital, but in letters to his father later on in the war this aspiration seemed to disappear; instead Edward considered working in the American South to assist freed African-Americans. Davidson suggests that Edward's correspondence with Leidy and Ferdinand Hayden, who worked as field surgeons during the war, might have informed Edward of the horrors of the occupation.
Edward was involved in a love affair; his father did not approve. Whether Edward or the unnamed woman (whom he at one point intended to marry) broke off the relationship is unknown, but he took the breakup poorly.
Biographer and paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn attributed Edward's sudden departure for Europe as a method of keeping him from being drafted into the Civil War. Cope did write to his father from London on February 11, 1864, that, "I shall get home in time to catch and be caught by the new draft. I shall not be sorry for this, as I know certain persons who would be mean enough to say that I have gone to Europe to avoid the war." Eventually Cope took the pragmatic approach and waited out the conflict.[21] He may have suffered from mild depression during this period, and often complained of boredom.
Despite his torpor, Edward proceeded with his tour of Europe, and met with some of the most highly esteemed scientists of the world during his travels through France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Italy, and Eastern Europe, most likely with introductory letters from Leidy and Spencer Baird. In the winter of 1863, Edward met Othniel Charles Marsh while in Berlin. Marsh, age thirty-two, was attending the University of Berlin. He held two university degrees in comparison to Edward's lack of formal schooling past sixteen, but Edward had written 37 scientific papers in comparison to Marsh's two published works.
While they would later become rivals, on meeting the two men appeared to take a liking to each other. Marsh led Edward on a tour of the city, and they stayed together for days. After Edward left Berlin the two maintained correspondence, exchanging manuscripts, fossils, and photographs. Edward burned many of his journals and letters from Europe upon his return to the United States. Friends intervened and stopped Cope from destroying some of his drawings and notes, in what author Url Lanham deemed a "partial suicide".
Family and early career
Upon returning to Philadelphia in 1864 the Cope family made every effort to secure Edward a teaching post as the Professor of Zoology at Haverford College, a small Quaker school where the family had philanthropic ties.
The college awarded him an honorary master's degree so he could have the position. Cope even began to think about marriage and consulted his father in the matter, telling him of the girl he would like to marry: "an amiable woman, not over sensitive, with considerable energy, and especially one inclined to be serious and not inclined to frivolity and display—the more truly Christian of course the better—seems to be the most practically the most suitable for me, though intellect and accomplishments have more charm."
Cope thought of Annie Pim, a member of the Society of Friends, as less a lover than companion, declaring that "her amiability and domestic qualities generally, her capability of taking care of a house, etc., as well as her steady seriousness weigh far more with me than any of the traits which form the theme of poets!" Cope's family approved of his choice, and the marriage took place in July 1865 at Pim's farmhouse in Chester County, Pennsylvania.[30] The two had a single daughter, Julia Biddle Cope, born June 10, 1866.[31] Cope's return to the United States also marked an expansion of his scientific studies; in 1864 he described several fishes, a whale, and the amphibian Amphibamus grandiceps (his first paleontological contribution.)
During the period between 1866 and 1867 Cope went on trips to western parts of the country. Cope related to his father his scientific experiences; to his daughter he sent descriptions of animal life as part of her education. Cope found educating his students at Haverford "a pleasure" but wrote to his father that he "could not get any work done." He resigned from his position at Haverford and moved his family to Haddonfield, in part to be closer to the fossil beds of western New Jersey. Due to the time-consuming nature of his Haverford position Cope had not had time to attend to his farm and had let it out to others, but eventually found he was in need of more money to fuel his scientific habits.
Pleading with his father for money to pursue his career, he finally sold the farm in 1869. Alfred apparently did not press his son to continue farming, and Edward focused on his scientific career. He continued his continental travels, including trips to Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. He visited caves across the region. He stopped these cave explorations after an 1871 trip to the Wyandotte Caves in Indiana, but remained interested in the subject.
Cope had visited Haddonfield many times in the 1860s, paying periodical visits to the marl pits. The fossils he found in these pits became the focus of several papers, including a description in 1868 of Elasmosaurus platyurus and Laelaps. Marsh accompanied him on one of these excursions. Cope's proximity to the beds after moving to Haddonfield made more frequent trips possible. The Copes lived comfortably in a frame house backed by an apple orchard. Two maids tended the estate, which entertained a number of guests. Cope's only concern was for more money to spend on his scientific work.
The 1870s were the golden years of Cope's career, marked by his most prominent discoveries and rapid flow of publications. Among his descriptions were the therapsid Lystrosaurus (1870), the archosauromorph Champsosaurus (1876), and the sauropod Amphicoelias (1878), possibly the largest dinosaur ever discovered. In the period of one year, from 1879 to 1880, Cope published 76 papers based on his travels through New Mexico and Colorado, and on the findings of his collectors in Texas, Kansas Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.
During the peak years, Cope published around 25 reports and preliminary observations each year. The hurried publications led to errors in interpretation and naming—many of his scientific names were later canceled or withdrawn. In comparison, Marsh wrote and published less frequently and more succinctly—his work's appearance in the widespread American Journal of Science led to faster reception abroad, and subsequently Marsh's reputations grew faster than Cope.
In autumn 1871 Cope began prospecting farther west to the fossil fields of Kansas. Leidy and Marsh had been to the region earlier, and Cope employed one of Marsh's guides, Benjamin Mudge, who was in want of a job.
Cope's companion Charles Sternberg described the lack of water and good food available to Cope and his helpers on these expeditions. Cope would suffer from a "severe attack of nightmare" in which "every animal of which we had found trace during the day played with him at night ... sometimes he would lose half the night in this exhausting slumber." Nevertheless Cope continued to lead the party from sunrise to sunset, sending letters to his wife and child describing his finds.[47] The severe desert conditions and Cope's habit of overworking himself till he was bedridden caught up with him and in 1872 he broke down from exhaustion.[48] Cope maintained a regular pattern of summers spent prospecting and winters writing up his findings from 1871 to 1879.
Throughout the decade Cope traveled across the West, exploring rocks of the Eocene in 1872 and the Titanothere Beds of Colorado in 1873. In 1874 Cope was employed with the Wheeler Survey, a group of surveys led by George Montague Wheeler that mapped parts of the United States west of the 100th meridian. The survey traveled through New Mexico, whose Puerco formations, he wrote to his father, provided "the most important find in geology I have ever made".
The New Mexico bluffs contained millions of years of formation and subsequent deformation, and were in an area which had not been visited by Leidy or Marsh. Being part of the survey had other advantages; Cope was able to draw on fort commissaries and defray publishing costs. While there was no salary, his findings would be published in the annual reports that the surveys printed. Cope brought Annie and Julia along on one such survey and rented a house for them at Fort Bridger, but he spent more of his own money on these survey trips than he would have liked.
Cope's father died December 4, 1875, and left Edward with an inheritance of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. His death was a blow to Cope; his father was a constant confidant. The same year marked a suspension of much of Cope's field work and a new emphasis on writing up discoveries of the previous years. His chief publication of the time, The Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations of the West, was a collection of 303 pages and 54 illustration plates. The memoir summarized his experiences prospecting in New Jersey and Kansas. Cope now had the finances to hire multiple teams to search for fossils for him year-round and he advised the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition on their fossil displays. Cope's studies of marine reptiles of Kansas closed in 1876, opening a new focus on terrestrial reptiles.
The same year, Cope moved from Haddonfield to 2100 and 2102 Pine Street in Philadelphia. He converted one of the two houses into a museum where he stored his growing collection of fossils.[49] Cope's expeditions took him across Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana. Cope's initial journey into the Clarendon Beds of Upper Miocene and Lower Pliocene of Texas led to an affiliation with the Geological Survey of Texas. Cope's papers on the region constitute some of his most important paleontological contributions. In 1877 he purchased half the rights to the American Naturalist to publish the papers he produced at a rate so high that Marsh questioned their dating.
Cope returned to Europe in August 1878 in response to an invitation to join the British Association for the Advancement of Science's Dublin meeting. He was warmly welcomed in England and France and met with the distinguished paleontologists and archeologists of the period. Marsh's attempts to sully Cope's reputation had made little impact on anyone save paleontologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who according to Osborn "alone treated [Cope] with coolness".
Following the Dublin meeting, Cope spent two days with the French Association for the Advancement of Science. At each gathering Cope exhibited dinosaur restorations by Philadelphia colleague John A. Ryder and various charts and plates from geological surveys of the 1870s led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. He returned to London on October 12, meeting with anatomist Richard Owen, ichthyologist Hermann Gunther and paleontologist H. G. Seeley. While in Europe Cope purchased a great collection of fossils from Argentina. Cope never found time to describe the collection and many of the boxes remained unopened until Cope's death.[60]
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Who is Edward Drinker Cope? Part 1.
From Wikipedia:
Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of nineteen. Though his father tried to raise Cope as a gentleman farmer, he eventually acquiesced to his son's scientific aspirations. Cope married his cousin and had one child; the family moved from Philadelphia to Haddonfield, New Jersey, although Cope would maintain a residence and museum in Philadelphia in his later years.
Cope had little formal scientific training, and he eschewed a teaching position for field work. He made regular trips to the American West prospecting in the 1870s and 1880s, often as a member of United States Geological Survey teams. A personal feud between Cope and paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh led to a period of intense fossil-finding competition now known as the Bone Wars. Cope's financial fortunes soured after failed mining ventures in the 1880s, forcing him to sell off much of his fossil collection. He experienced a resurgence in his career toward the end of his life before dying of unidentified causes on April 12, 1897.
Cope's scientific pursuits nearly bankrupted him, but his contributions helped to define the field of American paleontology. He was a prodigious writer, with 1,400 papers published over his lifetime, although his rivals would debate the accuracy of his rapidly published works. He discovered, described, and named more than 1,000 vertebrate species including hundreds of fishes and dozens of dinosaurs. His proposals on the origin of mammalian molars and for the gradual enlargement of mammalian species over geologic time ("Cope's Law") are notable among his theoretical contributions.
Early life
Edward Drinker Cope was born on July 28, 1840, the eldest son of Alfred and Hanna Cope. The death of his mother when he was three years old seemed to have had little effect on young Edward, as he mentioned in his letters that he had no recollection of her. His stepmother, Rebecca Biddle, filled the maternal role; Cope referred to her warmly, as well as his younger stepbrother, James Biddle Cope.
His father, an orthodox member of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers, operated a lucrative shipping business started by his father, Thomas P. Cope, in 1821. He was a philanthropist who gave money to the Society of Friends, the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens and the Institute for Colored Youth.
Edward was born and raised in a large stone house called "Fairfield" in what is now suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The 8 acres of pristine and exotic gardens of the house offered a landscape that Edward was able to explore.
The Copes began teaching their children to read and write at a very young age, and took Edward on trips across New England and to museums, zoos, and gardens. Cope's interest in animals became apparent at a young age, as did his natural artistic ability.
Alfred intended to give his son the same education that he himself was brought up in. At nine, Edward was sent to a day school in Philadelphia and in 1853 at the age of twelve, he was sent to the Friends' Boarding School or Westtown, near West Chester, Pennsylvania.
The school was founded in 1799 with fundraising by members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and provided much of the Cope family's education. The prestigious school was expensive, costing Alfred $500 in tuition each year, and in his first year Edward studied algebra, chemistry, scripture, physiology, grammar, astronomy, and Latin.
Edward's letters home requesting a larger allowance show he was able to manipulate his father, and that he was, according to author and Cope biographer Jane Davidson, "a bit of a spoiled brat". His letters suggest that he was lonely at the school—it was the first time he had been away from his home for an extended period. Otherwise, Edward's studies progressed much like a typical boy—he consistently had "less than perfect" or "not quite satisfactory" marks for conduct from his teachers, and did not work hard on his penmanship lessons, which may have contributed to his often illegible handwriting as an adult.
Edward returned to Westtown in 1855, accompanied by two of his sisters. Biology began to interest him more that year, and he studied natural history texts in his spare time. While at the school Cope frequently visited the Academy of Natural Sciences. Edward frequently obtained bad marks due to quarrelsome and bad conduct.
His letters to his father show that he chafed at farm work and betrayed flashes of the temper for which he would later become well known.[9] After sending Edward back to the farm for summer break in 1854 and 1855, Alfred did not return Edward to school after spring 1856.
Instead Alfred attempted to turn his son into a gentleman farmer, which he considered a wholesome profession that would yield enough profit to lead a comfortable life, and improve the undersized Edward's health. Until 1863, Cope's letters to his father continually expressed his yearning for a more professional scientific career than that of a farmer, which he called "dreadfully boring".[10]
While working on farms, Edward continued his education on his own. In 1858 he began working part-time at the Academy of Natural Sciences, reclassifying and cataloguing specimens, and published his first series of research results in January 1859. Cope began taking French and German classes with a former Westtown teacher. Though Alfred resisted his son's pursuit of a science career, he paid for his son's private studies.
Instead of working the farm his father bought for him, Edward rented out the land and used the income to further his scientific endeavors.
His father finally gave in to Edward's wishes and paid for university classes. Cope attended the University of Pennsylvania in the 1861 and/or 1862 academic years, studying comparative anatomy under Joseph Leidy, one of the most influential anatomists and paleontologists at the time. Cope asked his father to pay for a tutor in both German and French, "not so much for their own sake," wrote Edward, "but as for their value in enabling me to read their books of a literary or scientific character."
During this period he had a job recataloging the herpetological collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences, which he became a member of at Leidy's urging. Cope's job lasted two years and he visited the Smithsonian Institution on occasion, where he became acquainted with Spencer Baird, who was an expert in the fields of ornithology and ichthyology. In 1861 he published his first paper on Salamandridae classification; over the next five years he published primarily on reptiles and amphibians.[19] Cope's membership in the Academy of Natural Sciences and American Philosophical Society gave him outlets to publish and announce his work; many of his early paleontological works were published by the Philosophical Society.[20]
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Nov 6, 2010: Researcher IDs Ice Age sloth bone in Colorado
Yahoo News: Researcher IDs Ice Age sloth bone in Colorado
SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. – Scientists excavating an Ice Age ecosystem in the resort town of Snowmass Village say they have found the first Jefferson's ground sloth ever discovered in Colorado.
Denver Museum of Nature & Science research associate Greg McDonald confirmed Saturday that a bone found earlier this week is the upper arm of the Jefferson's ground sloth. He says that other sloths have been found in Colorado, but they were a different species called Harlan's ground sloth. The bone found this week is the first from a Jefferson's ground sloth in Colorado.
So far, scientists working at the site also have found a Columbian mammoth, American mastodon, Ice Age bison and an Ice Age deer.
SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. – Scientists excavating an Ice Age ecosystem in the resort town of Snowmass Village say they have found the first Jefferson's ground sloth ever discovered in Colorado.
Denver Museum of Nature & Science research associate Greg McDonald confirmed Saturday that a bone found earlier this week is the upper arm of the Jefferson's ground sloth. He says that other sloths have been found in Colorado, but they were a different species called Harlan's ground sloth. The bone found this week is the first from a Jefferson's ground sloth in Colorado.
So far, scientists working at the site also have found a Columbian mammoth, American mastodon, Ice Age bison and an Ice Age deer.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Nov 5, 2010: Scientists: Colorado dig reveals Ice Age ecosystem
Yahoo News: Scientists: Colorado dig reveals Ice Age ecosystem
SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. – Scientists say an excavation site in western Colorado is revealing an entire Ice Age ecosystem.
Crews from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science said Friday that the remains of two more kinds of animals have been discovered near the resort town of Snowmass Village — an upper arm bone from a giant ground sloth and a small deer-like animal.
Partial remains of five mastodons, three Ice Age bison and a juvenile Columbian mammoth as well as plant matter and insects have also been found. Crews haven't found any human artifacts.
The museum is bringing in more experts to help, including University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher. He's the guest curator for a traveling exhibit on mammoths and mastodons, which opened at The Field Museum in Chicago.
SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. – Scientists say an excavation site in western Colorado is revealing an entire Ice Age ecosystem.
Crews from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science said Friday that the remains of two more kinds of animals have been discovered near the resort town of Snowmass Village — an upper arm bone from a giant ground sloth and a small deer-like animal.
Partial remains of five mastodons, three Ice Age bison and a juvenile Columbian mammoth as well as plant matter and insects have also been found. Crews haven't found any human artifacts.
The museum is bringing in more experts to help, including University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher. He's the guest curator for a traveling exhibit on mammoths and mastodons, which opened at The Field Museum in Chicago.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Oct 18, 2010: Whales offer clues to ice age survival
UPI.com Science News: Whales offer clues to ice age survival
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- The answer to how gray whales survived the last ice age may come from a little-studied population of whales in the northwest Pacific, U.S. researchers say.
Gray whales normally feed on the seafloor at depths of no more than 150 feet and rely heavily on the shallow areas in Alaska's Bering Sea for food, NewScientist.com reports.
But researchers at the Smithsonian Institution say during the last ice age sea levels were 400 feet lower than today and the Bering Sea was a land bridge, leaving little of the north Pacific shallow enough for such feeding.
Northern feeding grounds then might have supported only a few hundred whales, researcher Nick Pyenson said, but genetic studies show no sign of a population reduction during that ice age.
Pyenson says he believes the whales shifted to open-water feeding to survive, an idea supported by the discovery of a small population of non-migrating, open-water feeders living in the northwest Pacific year-round.
So why are there so few open-water feeders now?
The non-migratory, open-water whales would have been easy targets for early whalers, Pyenson said, so the migratory population has come to dominate.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- The answer to how gray whales survived the last ice age may come from a little-studied population of whales in the northwest Pacific, U.S. researchers say.
Gray whales normally feed on the seafloor at depths of no more than 150 feet and rely heavily on the shallow areas in Alaska's Bering Sea for food, NewScientist.com reports.
But researchers at the Smithsonian Institution say during the last ice age sea levels were 400 feet lower than today and the Bering Sea was a land bridge, leaving little of the north Pacific shallow enough for such feeding.
Northern feeding grounds then might have supported only a few hundred whales, researcher Nick Pyenson said, but genetic studies show no sign of a population reduction during that ice age.
Pyenson says he believes the whales shifted to open-water feeding to survive, an idea supported by the discovery of a small population of non-migrating, open-water feeders living in the northwest Pacific year-round.
So why are there so few open-water feeders now?
The non-migratory, open-water whales would have been easy targets for early whalers, Pyenson said, so the migratory population has come to dominate.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Manifesto
This blog will chronicle the discovery not only of the dinosaurs but of other extinct creatures throughout the world's history.
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