Edward Drinker Cope

Paleontologist

• Born: July 28, 1840
• Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Died: April 12, 1897
• Place of death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

American paleontologist

Pioneering paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope published more than 1,300 papers during his lifetime and helped discover more than 600 extinct species. Cope was a major contributor to the growth of American paleontology in the nineteenth century and one of the most prolific fossil hunters in history.

Born: July 28, 1840; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Died: April 12, 1897; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Primary field: Earth sciences

Specialty: Paleontology

Early Life

Cope was born in 1840 to a wealthy Quaker family in Pennsylvania. Cope’s father was an amateur horticulturalist who instilled an interest in natural history in his son. In his youth, Cope attended educational classes at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, then the leading paleontological organization in the nation. Cope was largely self-educated, utilizing his access to libraries to study the language and methods of scientific inquiry. At the age of nineteen, Cope published his first scientific paper for the academy, a review of the major types of salamanders (Salamandridae), with a description of two new species.

In 1860 and 1861, Cope studied anatomy with Dr. Joseph Leidy, the foremost American paleontologist and head of geology and anatomy at the Philadelphia Academy. Cope also curated the academy’s reptile collection under Leidy’s supervision. From the winter of 1862 to 1863, Cope studied at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, with prominent professor Spencer F. Baird.

To protect him from serving in the American Civil War, Cope’s father convinced him to travel abroad, and Cope visited many European cities to examine natural history collections and learn about cataloging and studying anatomy. In Berlin, Germany, Cope met graduate student Othniel Charles Marsh and the two became friends; Marsh would eventually become Cope’s rival and the scientific competition between the two would define both of their careers and paleontological legacies. Cope returned to the United States in 1864 and was awarded a professorship in anatomy at Haverford College. After three years in this position, Cope left to focus on exploration and cataloging species in the field.

Life’s Work

Cope was devoted to herpetology, or the study of reptiles and amphibians, until 1865, when he was approached by a representative of the Illinois State Geological Survey who asked him to identify the remains of a salamander from the Carboniferous period. Thereafter, Cope shifted his focus to paleontology, working with the state geological surveys to find and identify extinct animals.

During this period, Cope was in frequent contact with Marsh, who was now leading expeditions for Yale University’s burgeoning paleontology department. The friendship between the two men resulted in Cope’s naming a specimen of extinct salamander in Marsh’s honor, which was reciprocated the following year when Marsh named an extinct reptile after Cope. In 1868, Cope brought Marsh to see fossil beds in Haddonfield, New Jersey, where he and a team led by paleontologist Joseph Leidy had recently recovered the first dinosaur specimen from US sediment. In secret, Marsh bribed the owner of the quarry to send any new fossils to Yale rather than to the Natural Academy of Sciences, which sparked a professional feud between Marsh and Cope.

That same year, Cope published a manuscript to the American Philosophical Society’s journal, describing a new species of extinct marine reptile, Elasmosaurus, in which he mistakenly mounted the animal’s skull to its tail rather than to its neck. Marsh ensured that the scientific community learned of Cope’s error, thus deepening their growing rivalry.

In 1872, Cope’s friend Ferdinand V. Hayden offered him a position with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). In this capacity, Cope traveled to regions of Wyoming and Colorado with Hayden, and he later published two works based on his findings: Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations of the West (1875) and Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West (1884). Cope also continued to lead expeditions for various state geological surveys, resulting in dozens of publications over his career, such as Account of the Mammalian Fauna of the Post Pliocene Deposits in the State of Indiana (1884) and Vertebrata of the Swift Current Creek Region of the Cypress Hills (1885).

Though Cope was an extremely prolific researcher, his work sometimes suffered from his rush to publish his manuscripts. Part of the reason for this was the intense rivalry between Cope and Marsh. Both men visited the American West during the 1870s and 1880s. Cope discovered a variety of new dinosaur species during this time and named the species Camarasaurus and Coelophysis in addition to the Triassic reptile Dimetrodon. However, in their haste to outdo one another, both Cope and Marsh misidentified species and made a variety of other errors. In addition, both men obsessed about each other’s progress, utilizing spies, bribery, and other measures to try to keep the best specimens for themselves.

Cope’s publications were so extensive that, in 1878, he bought the natural history journal American Naturalist in Salem, Massachusetts. Cope moved the magazine’s headquarters to Philadelphia and his ownership gave him a better platform to publish his research. In 1887, Cope became editor in chief of the publication, a post he held until his death.

Marsh used his political connections to become chief paleontologist for the USGS in 1882, using this position to cut off Cope’s access to federal funding. Cope spent much of his family fortune trying to continue his research and invested in an ill-advised silver-mining venture that resulted in bankruptcy. In 1890, Marsh attempted to take possession of Cope’s fossil collection, claiming that the specimens were obtained using federal funding and therefore belonged to the state. Cope’s detailed records showed that he funded most of his expeditions privately, allowing him to keep his collections. The men’s feud continued through the newspapers for years, leading to the financial ruin and personal disgrace of both men.

In 1895, Cope sold his collection of North American mammal species to the American Museum of Natural History. In 1896, he was elected president of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, but he died before he could deliver his inaugural address to the academy.

Impact

With the discovery of nearly 1,000 species and more than 1,300 publications to his name, Cope has remained one of the most prolific and successful paleontologists in American history. Cope’s feud with Marsh largely eclipsed his more productive contributions to the field; their historic rivalry, often called the “bone wars,” became one of the most publicized events in American scientific history. Though Cope’s participation in the bone wars largely defined his legacy, his contributions to the discovery of dinosaur and prehistoric reptile fauna include some of the most famous species known from American strata.

Cope’s greatest accomplishments include his detailed description of Tertiary fauna, organisms that existed between the death of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period and the modern period. Cope’s Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West provided a detailed account of this portion of the American fossil record and was his most detailed, accurate, and influential publication.

Cope was also a scientist of wide-ranging interests who made important contributions to the study of living species, becoming a leading expert in herpetology. Cope helped to define the then poorly understood mammalian order Marsupialia and suborder Toxodonta, and his papers helped to refine the relationship between the orders of Perissodactyla and Artiodactyla, based on differences in the structure of the foot. Cope also founded his own biological law—called Cope’s law—which describes the tendency for animal lineages to increase in size over time.

Cope was a supporter of both the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and the American Philosophical Society and his work for both institutions helped to define the role of paleontology in American science. Cope’s popularly publicized adventures in the American West, which included encounters with warring Native American tribes and a variety of other dangerous encounters, inspired a new generation of paleontologists to take up the field.

Upon his death, Cope willed his body to science for further study. His bones were shelved in a natural history collection for more than a century before they were found and prepared for display. Cope’s brain and skeleton were put on display at the Wistar Institute, alongside the brain of fellow paleontologist Joseph Leidy.

Bibliography

Jaffe, Mark. The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science. New York: Three Rivers, 2001. Print. Detailed account of the rivalry between Cope and Marsh provides biographical information on both men. Discusses Cope’s herpetological accomplishments and his expeditions with the USGS.

Lanham, Url. The Bone Hunters: The Historic Age of Paleontology in the American West. Mineola: Dover, 1992. Print. Covers the “gilded age” of paleontological exploration as well as Cope’s work with the state and federal geological surveys.

Switek, Brian. Written in Stone: The Hidden Secrets of Fossils and the Story of Life on Earth. London: Icon, 2011. Print. Covers the history of paleontology in the United States and Europe. Contains an evaluation of Cope’s discoveries and contributions to paleontology as well as his role in the bone wars.