Edward Drinker Cope ’s skull started out on his body , naturally enough .
Born into a well - off Quaker family in 1840 , the Philadelphia native was already journaling and drawing his observation about the rude human race at the age of six . By 19 he ’d published his first scientific paper , a treatise on salamander . Like many scholars of his day , Cope was a Renaissance man , analyse amphibian and fish and whatever else take in his oculus , but he ’s most famous for his work in paleontology and his disputatious battle with rival Othniel Charles Marsh .
If you consider science is a pure pursuit of truth without respect to ego , you know nothing of the Bone Wars . Cope and Marsh sent collectors digging and blast their elbow room across the American West in search of dinosaur remains , often naming the same species more than once in an attempt to get the most credit . When their accumulator were done excavate a site , they were n’t above demolish the evidence to check that the next chemical group would n’t have any fogy to reclaim for themselves .
The rivalry began when Marsh embarrassed Cope by demo he ’d placed the oral sex of anElasmosauruson its scant shadow instead of its recollective neck . The two paleontologists fought for years in academic circles and newsprint , and both wound up blur by the close . Along the way they reveal many dinosaur you ’ll see in museum today , includingTriceratops , Stegosaurus , andApatosaurus .
Elasmosaurus , the dinosaur that come out Cope ’s feud with Marsh .
Cope die in 1897 , most in all likelihood alone on a cot wall by fogy . Prior to dying he ’d arranged for his organic structure to be donate to scientific discipline , specifying that his skeleton should be groom and preserved but not placed on expo . Originally maintain by the American Anthropometric Society , a group with a fondness for mensurate the brains of celebrated men , Cope ’s skull was give in 1966 to the University of Pennsylvania ’s Museum of Anthropology , and that ’s when thing got a small weird .
A distinguished anthropology professor by the name of Loren Eiseley view Cope ’s name on a box and pull up stakes a note that said , “ Gone to lunch — Edward Drinker Cope . ” Eiseley took the bones back to his power and laid them out on a conference table to check that everything was inviolate before identify them back into the boxwood . Over the years , the paleontologist ’s remains became a fixture in Eiseley ’s role , and the anthropologist toasted “ Eddie ” with sherry and even bought him a birthday present of a skeleton - bedecked printing closure . The office faculty also decorated Cope for Christmas .
Eiseley had a nephew named Jim Hahn , a sailor who study physical anthropology under his uncle at Penn . The two men looked and sounded a fortune alike , and they had little risky venture together , one clock time finding some .356 Magnum shells in a parking lot and ransacking a nearby Salvation Army dip box in search of the hitman , harmonise toFox at the Wood ’s Edge , Gale E. Christianson ’s life of Eiseley . So it was not surprising when the professor , after deciding he require to be eat up with Cope ’s bones , peck his nephew to help him with the undertaking .
Eiseley perish in July 1977 , and Jim Hahn found himself in the prof ’s office at the Penn Museum trying to record Cope ’s bone to his own arm and legs . Hahn was sweating in the summertime heat and worried he ’d fall apart correctly before the museum guard ’s eyes , so he opted instead to stock Cope out in a box with a bunch of his uncle ’s books . That went off without a halt , but at the funeral home Hahn realized there was no way he could get Eddie in the casket without the mortician noticing , so back to the museum the bones work .
Cope breathe in peace treaty until theJurassic Parkmania of the early 1990s , when a photographer name Louie Psihoyos was jaunt around the country shoot paleontology artifact . Psihoyos would afterward directThe Cove , the 2009 Academy Award - winning docudrama about dolphinfish hunt in Japan , but he was already a successful photographer by the time he get hold himself verbalize to paleontologist Ted Daeschler at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia . The discussion turned to Cope , and Daeschler name that Eddie ’s bones were sitting in a box across townspeople . Daeschler made a call and the museum leave alone Cope at the front desk for Psihoyos , who picked up the two boxes and took Cope on the road .
“ The box with the skull was last used for electrical parts , ” enjoin Psihoyos , who , along with collaborationist John Knoebber , started address Cope like one of the gang . Knoebber made a velvet - run along mahogany box for the skull , which they did n’t like leaving in the new wave , so “ Do you have Ed ? ” became a rough-cut chorus every time they left a dining car .
Cope ’s skull was a conversation starter motor , granting them entrée with paleontologists they interviewed for their bookHunting Dinosaurs . “ That was like bringing Elvis to a rock ‘ n ’ axial motion convention , ” say Psihoyos . “ You feel like you know him , because you ’d read a slew of his history . ”
But there was a job : The museum had no idea Psihoyos and Knoebber were taking the skull on the route . “ They did n’t refund it , and they guide it on a head trip , ” says Daeschler . “ Which is just not coolheaded . grant , they ’re not scientist , and they do n’t know the ways of loan that hail from scientific instauration . ”
Psihoyos calculate he had the skull for three years . Near the end , a paleontologist key out Bob Bakker ( who is famous for helping generalise the theory that some dinosaurs were lovesome - blooded ) adjudge Cope ’s remains as the ideal case of humankind . Every meter a new coinage is classified , one representative is declare to be the type specimen . When Carl Linneaus , the father of modern taxonomy , originally namedHomo sapiensin 1758 , he skipped that part and say , “ Know thyself . ” Bakker went ahead and fundamentally tried to modify that to “ Know Edward Drinker Cope . ”
“ The legend I heard was that Cope wanted to be the type specimen , ” says Psihoyos . “ This is the dark part of the history . Cope was part of a group of scientists back then who were strain to set forth the approximation that the Caucasian race is superior , and they were using brainpower case sizing and all these opinion to decriminalize it . Well , that never came to fruition . ”
Today ’s historians and paleontologists do n’t deny that Cope , like many of his contemporaries , held some very racist estimation about human frame , but what ’s much less readable is whether Cope wanted to become the type specimen when he donate his body to science . As Wallace explains inThe Bonehunters ’ Revenge , Cope had few tooth at the end of his aliveness , and some of Cope and Marsh ’s biggest contributions to scientific discipline dealt with dentition , so the Philadelphia Quaker would ’ve love he was n’t worthy . But the fable persists , probably because it would ’ve been one last way for Cope to good his challenger .
Drawing by artist Charles R. Knight of twoLealapsfighting . It ’s considered to be symbolic of Cope and Marsh ’s feud .
“ Cope did n’t want hoi polloi to do what Psihoyos did , ” say Daeschler . “ He did not need to be paraded around because he was the great Professor Cope . He had a high opinion of himself , so he retrieve that might happen . And it did . It absolutely did pass off . ”
The Penn Museum require manage back , and they added another wrinkle to the level : Professor Eiseley had loaned the skull to an creative person from the Museum of Natural chronicle in the 1970s , and they were n’t even sure if the right one ever came back . So peradventure Psihoyos , Knoebber , and Bakker had been hanging out with the incorrect skull all along .
“ They were embarrassed to have rented him out like a program library Scripture , ” says Psihoyos , who embark the stiff back via FedEx . “ I ’m convinced it was Ed . ”
That ’s one part of the story where the Penn Museum now match with the photographer . The skull , whose jaw become miss long before Psihoyos ’ journey , has been compared to older drafting of Cope ’s remains and dictated to be the real heap . Cope is not the eccentric specimen , however . The donnish biotic community give that accolade to Linneaus .
Cope ’s skull is back under the care of the Penn Museum , in that fancy velvet - lined box . Janet Monge , associate director at the museum , says she sometimes bring grapple out for classes on the case - specimen controversy , but as for his current whereabouts :
“ He ’s on the shelf right now . ”
All photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons .
