Dinosaur Wars

In the mid-19th century, the modern era of “big game” dinosaur hunting began with the discovery of large fossil bones—which shed light on prehistoric times and also led to debate about Darwin's theory of evolution. But the ongoing search sometimes turned nasty and personal. Filmmaker Mark Davis' Dinosaur Wars—aired on the PBS series American Experience—looks at the “war” between two paleontologists whose one-time friendship quickly devolved into a bitter rivalry. Archival photos and films, readings from letters, and interviews with assorted experts are combined to tell the tale of O.C. Marsh of Yale University and Edward Drinker Cope of Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences, who first consulted over a large set of remains found in Haddonfield, NJ. Unfortunately, cooperation soon degenerated into assorted denigrating charges and counter-charges aimed at ruining each other's professional reputations. Both men became obsessed when the scene shifted to the arid, open lands of the American West—an area rich with finds—even employing spies as they engaged in frenzied academic competition, rushed papers into print, and vied to secure naming rights for discoveries. Marsh is described here as having led a solitary, “stunted life,” while Cope is called a peace-loving “gentleman naturalist”—but a thin-skinned man. Eventually their contentious relationship would deplete their fortunes and bring both men down. Viewed with more than a century's hindsight, it's sometimes difficult to see what the uproar was all about, but their discoveries unquestionably changed the face of science. An interesting slice of history, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (S. Rees)