Chapter Content
Okay, so, like, chapter sixteen, right? It's called "Sciences at Odds." And it all starts, get this, back in 1787. Some person in New Jersey – nobody really remembers who it was now, which is kinda sad – they found this huge thigh bone sticking out of the bank of a creek. Woodbury Creek, to be exact. And it was, like, obviously not from any animal, you know, that was still around. And definitely not native to New Jersey.
So, based on what we know now, they think it was a hadrosaur, which is a type of dinosaur with a duck-like bill. But, like, nobody had even *heard* of dinosaurs back then, okay?
The bone ended up getting sent to Dr. Caspar Wistar, who was, like, *the* top anatomist in America at the time. And he, you know, he presented it at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society in Philly that fall. But Wistar, he didn't, like, fully grasp the importance of it. He just kind of, you know, made some vague remarks about how it was, like, really, really big. So he totally missed his chance to discover dinosaurs, like, half a century before anyone else. Seriously!
And, uh, the bone, it didn't really cause much of a stir, so it ended up getting stuck in a storage room and then eventually just… disappeared. Gone! So basically, the first dinosaur bone *ever* found was also the first dinosaur bone to get, you know, *lost*. Figures, right?
And it's kinda weird that the bone didn't get more attention. You see, it was a time when Americans were *super* into finding remains of ancient, big animals. And this French naturalist guy, the Comte de Buffon – remember him from the last chapter? He was the hot-sphere dude – he had this weird theory that, like, everything in the New World was, like, *inferior* to things in the Old World.
Buffon, he wrote in his book that, like, the water was gross, the land was bad for crops, the animals were small and weak, their muscles were ruined by "poisonous vapors" from swamps and sunless forests. And even Native Americans were like, not very fertile!
He even went as far as to say that Native American men "don't have beards or body hair" and the women, "lack passion." He said their reproductive organs were "small and weak." Can you believe this guy?
And, uh, other writers, especially ones who, like, *didn't* know America very well, they totally jumped on the bandwagon. There was this Dutch guy, Corneille de Pauw, who said that Native American men were not only unimpressive at reproducing, but also so, so infertile that "milk flows from their breasts!" It's like, what?! That idea was actually surprisingly popular, and it showed up in European writings for a really long time.
So, naturally, Americans were *not* happy about all this slander. Thomas Jefferson, he was, like, furious, and he, you know, wrote a rebuttal in his "Notes on the State of Virginia." He even asked his friend John Sullivan in New Hampshire to send Buffon a moose to prove how big and majestic American animals were.
It took Sullivan's men, like, two weeks to find a decent moose. But, you know, it didn't have the big antlers that Jefferson wanted, so Sullivan, being the resourceful guy he was, just, like, tacked on some elk or red deer antlers instead. Who's gonna know in France, right?
Meanwhile, back in Philly where Dr. Wistar was, naturalists were trying to put together the bones of this giant elephant-like animal. At first, it was called "the Incognitum," which basically means "unknown big thing." Then they figured it was a mammal. The first bones were found in Kentucky, at a place called Big Bone Lick, but they started finding them everywhere. So, apparently, America used to have these giant creatures, which would, like, totally disprove Buffon's claims.
But the naturalists, they might have gotten a little bit carried away. They made the animal, like, six times bigger than it actually was, and they gave it these huge, scary claws. But, yeah, those were actually claws from a giant sloth they found nearby. They imagined it was, like, "agile and ferocious like a tiger," and they drew it hiding behind rocks, ready to pounce. And once they found tusks, they tried to stick them on the head in all sorts of ways. Some guy, like, screwed the tusks on backwards, like saber-tooth tiger fangs! Another guy curved them backwards, saying it was aquatic and used its tusks to anchor itself to trees when it took a nap! But the most accurate thought, that this thing was extinct, Buffon saw it as proof that the animals were, like, on a decline.
Buffon died, but the debate didn't. Fast forward to 1795, and a collection of bones was sent to Paris to this young paleontologist named Georges Cuvier. Everyone was already super impressed with his skill, and he was able to figure out what the bones looked like together. Supposedly, he could look at a single tooth or jaw bone and describe the animal and its temperament. He realized no one had described the animal in America, so he wrote a book on it. He called it the "mastodon," which means "breast-shaped tooth." Oddly appropriate, right?
Inspired by the debate, Cuvier wrote a paper about living elephants, and the ones he found turned to fossils. In this paper, he, for the first time ever, introduced the idea of extinction. He thought the Earth went through disasters that caused animals to die. Religious people, Cuvier included, didn't like this idea, because it meant that God could be erratic. What would he do by creating and destroying? This idea was against the idea that the world was arranged, where every living thing had a purpose. Jefferson could not accept this. So when someone asked if an expedition was worth it to find an animal in America, he quickly agreed in hopes explorers would find mastodons. He chose Meriwether Lewis, his friend, and William Clark to lead, and told them to find the animals by Dr. Caspar Wistar.
In Paris, Cuvier presented extinction. Around the same time, in England, William Smith talked about fossils. He was a supervisor at a canal. On January 5th, he sat down in an inn and wrote his beliefs. To explain rocks, you need to compare them. He realized Devonian rocks were younger than Cambrian. With every rock shift, some fossils disappeared, while some carried on to the next shift. You can figure out the age of the rocks from fossils. Smith began working on a rock layering map.
Unfortunately, Smith didn't wonder why rocks were underground the way they were. He said it wasn't his area.
Smith's work contributed to the extinction conversation. It proved that God got rid of living things all the time. Some animals survived, while some went extinct. Cuvier said that Genesis was about the most recent flood, and God didn't want Moses to be scared with previous ones.
So in the early 1800s, fossils were important. Wistar couldn't believe he missed the dinosaur bone significance. Around the world, bones kept getting found. In 1806, Lewis and Clark went through a part of Montana with dino bones everywhere. They found one in the rock, but did nothing with it. In New England, a boy named Pliny Moody found footprints. Some fossils ended up in Yale's Peabody Museum. These were the first dinosaur bones to be examined and preserved. In 1855, they realized what they were. Before his death, Wistar had a plant named after him.
By this time, paleontology moved to England. In 1812, Mary Anning, found a fossil of a 17-foot sea animal on a cliff. These are now called ichthyosaurs.
This started her career. For 35 years, she collected and sold fossils. She found the first plesiosaur fossil, another sea animal, and a pterosaur. No one knew what dinosaurs were, but they knew animals existed that were different from those around today.
She was really good at finding them, and taking them out without breaking them. If you visit the Natural History Museum in London, you'll understand what she did with limited tools and money. To pull out the plesiosaur alone, she spent ten years! She was never trained, but would provide scholars with accurate drawings. Though skilled, she had to live in poverty.
In paleontology, there is no one more undervalued than Mary Anning, except maybe Gideon Algernon Mantell, a Sussex doctor.
Mantell had his downsides. He was self-centered, and didn't care much for his family, but he was dedicated to paleontology. He had a loyal wife who spotted a fossil during one of his medical visits. It was a tooth that she gave him. Mantell realized that it belonged to a reptile from the Cretaceous Period. It was a plant-eater, and massive. His estimation was correct, even though no one had imagined that before.
Mantell realized his discovery would rewrite what they knew. William Buckland told him to be careful. For three years, he found evidence. He sent a tooth to Cuvier, who said it was a hippopotamus tooth. One day, Mantell met a colleague at the Hunterian Museum in London. He thought it looked like an iguana tooth. Mantell named the animal "Iguanodon" after the sun-loving lizard.
In reality, it was not related.
Mantell wrote a paper. However, another dino bone was found at a quarry in Oxford. A description was already written by Buckland, who encouraged Mantell to be careful. It was named Megalosaurus. Mantell's friend James Parkinson suggested the name to Buckland. Parkinson realized the animal had teeth inside a socket, similar to crocodiles. Buckland didn't realize how big his discovery was, but it was the first dinosaur that was published about. They gave him the credit, and not Mantell.
Continuing to be hopeful, Mantell found more fossils, and purchased them, eventually being the largest fossil collector. He realized he couldn't do both as a doctor. His house started to fill with fossils. To publish his book, he spent almost all the income he had. The book didn't sell well, and he lost money.
Mantell got an idea to turn his house into a museum, and charge for tickets. He realized this could hurt his status as a scientist, so he made it free. People came to see the museum, but it interrupted his work and family. To pay for everything, he sold his collection. His wife and four kids left.
His troubles were just beginning.
There is a forgotten wonder in London's Crystal Palace Park. It has life-size dino models. It's a popular place for tourists. The models are not accurate. The Iguanadon has a thumb that is a spike on its nose. It looks like a fat dog, and walks on four legs. They don't seem like animals that would cause hate, but they did.
Sydenham, where the park is, was a place to rebuild Crystal Palace. The dino models were economic. At one dinner in 1853, 21 scientists met inside the Iguanadon model. Gideon Mantell, the one who discovered the Iguanadon, was not one of them. The person who was, was Richard Owen.
Owen was a talented anatomist. He was meticulous and would sneak animal limbs for research. Once he tripped carrying a human head and watched it roll in the alley.
Owen worked at the Royal College of Surgeons. He became known for his skills and organization. He became an expert in animal anatomy, and would be sent dead animals from the zoo to dissect. His wife even came home to a dead rhino! He became an expert in animals, both alive and extinct. In 1861, he found the archaeopteryx in Bavaria, and wrote the official eulogy for the dodo.
He is remembered for his work with dinos. He created the name "dinosaur" in 1841. The name means "terrible lizard," but is incorrect. They weren't lizards, and some weren't scary. Owen knew they were reptiles, but didn't use the term. He failed to notice that dinos belonged to two categories: bird-hipped ornithischians and lizard-hipped saurischians.
Owen wasn't a great person. One of Darwin's least favorite people. Owen's own son said his dad had a "deplorable coldness of heart."
He was skilled in anatomy, so he could get away with some things. Huxley realized that Owen was listed as a professor at the Government School of Mines in a medical guide. Owen gave the guide the information himself! Another guy, Hugh Falconer, caught Owen crediting himself with one of Falconer's discoveries. Owen even had a fight with the Queen's dentist about teeth physiology.
He targeted those he didn't like. Early in his life, he removed Robert Grant's access to the dissection specimens Grant needed for research.
Owen made Mantell's life miserable. After losing everything, Mantell moved to London. In 1841, the year that Owen found the dinosaur, Mantell had a terrible accident. While in a carriage, he fell and was dragged by horses. He bent his back, was in pain, and could not be healed.
Owen removed Mantell's contributions, and renamed Mantell's finds. Owen refused to accept Mantell's articles at the Royal Society. In 1852, Mantell killed himself to escape the pain and persecution. His crooked spine was given to the Royal College of Surgeons to be taken care of by Richard Owen.
The indignities weren't over. After Mantell died, an obituary made him out to be mediocre. It gave credit for discovering Iguanodon to Cuvier and Owen. The style showed it was written by Owen.
Owen's fall came after this. A committee at the Royal Society, where Owen was the president, granted him the highest honor: the Royal Medal, for a paper about belemnites, an extinct mollusk. But this wasn't as original as it looked.
The belemnites had been discovered by Chaning Pearce 4 years earlier, and shown at a meeting of the Geological Society. Owen was there, but did not say this when he handed in his paper to the Royal Society. He named the animal "Owen's belemnite" after himself. He was allowed to keep the Royal Medal, but he was looked down upon.
Huxley voted him out of many committees, and became the new professor.
Owen no longer did important research. He began helping create the Natural History Museum in London. The building opened in 1880, and was made because of Owen's vision.
Before Owen, the museum was for an elite group. They had to write an application to get inside. After getting in, they were given tickets, and had to return again to view. At the museum, they couldn't stop for long. Owen wanted it open for everyone, and even told the workers to visit during the evening. He put signs next to the exhibits. Huxley argued that the museum should be a place for research. By making it a place for the public, Owen changed the purpose of museums.
He did not forget his enemies. He worked against creating a statue for Charles Darwin. He got a statue of himself on the stairs. Statues of Darwin and Huxley were put in the cafe.
It can be argued that Owen hurt geology, but a bigger conflict was coming. This one was overseas in America. It was a fight between two men: Edward Drinker Cope, and Othniel Charles Marsh.
They had a lot in common. They were both spoiled, self-centered, argumentative, jealous, and untrusting. Together, they changed paleontology.
At first, they were friends and fans. They even named fossils after each other. Then they became enemies and hated each other.
Marsh was older than Cope by 8 years. He was a loner, neatly dressed, and rarely went out into the field. He was rich. His uncle was George Peabody. Peabody funded the museum, and gave Marsh money to fill it.
Cope was rich. In 1876, he was bone hunting while George Armstrong Custer and his troops were being defeated. He decided to continue. He met suspicious Native Americans, but earned their trust by removing and inserting his dentures.
For a decade, the men were enemies in secret. In 1877, it became public. Arthur Lakes, a Colorado school teacher, found bones on a hike. Lakes thought the bones belonged to a giant lizard, and sent some samples to both Marsh and Cope. Cope sent Lakes $100, and told him to not tell anyone, especially Marsh. Lakes didn't know, and asked Marsh to give the bones to Cope. Marsh did so, and felt humiliated.
This kicked off a fight that became violent and ridiculous. At times, it got so bad that people were throwing rocks! Once, Cope was caught prying open Marsh's crates. They insulted each other's work in papers. Over the following years, their combined work caused the known dinosaur types to increase from 9, to almost 150. Dinosaurs like the stegosaurus, brontosaurus, diplodocus, and triceratops were all found by them. They worked too hard, so they sometimes mistook previously known things for new finds. They "discovered" a species called Uintatherium 22 times! Others spent years cleaning up the mess they made.
Cope made more finds. He wrote 1400 papers and described nearly 1300 new fossils, which was double what Marsh did. Cope could have done more, but lost his inheritance after investing. He lived in a room surrounded by books, papers, and bones. Marsh spent his last years in a mansion in New Haven. Cope died in 1897, and Marsh died 2 years later.
Cope had an interesting idea. He wanted his bones to be the model bones for humanity.
Cope said his bones would be donated to the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. After processing and putting the bones together, they were seen to show symptoms of early syphilis. His bones were not used, and humans have never been modeled.
Owen died in 1892, a few years before Cope or Marsh. Buckland went crazy, and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital near where Mantell had his accident. Mantell's spine was displayed for almost a century. During World War 2, it was destroyed by a bomb. The fossils of his were brought to New Zealand by Walter, one of Mantell's sons. He donated fossils, including the Iguanodon tooth, to the Colonial Museum in Wellington. It is no longer displayed.
The dino finds did not end there. In 1898, something amazing was found at Bone Cabin Quarry. Hundreds of fossils were found. Bones were used to build a cabin, which gave the place its name. Over the first two seasons, 110,000 pounds of ancient bones were taken.
In the 20th century, paleontologists had tons of bones to look at. No one knew their age. The believed age of the Earth also didn't add up with what was there. If Earth was 20 million years old, like Lord Kelvin believed, animals would all live and die at the same time.
Other scientists found that things didn't add up. Samuel Haughton said the age of Earth was 2.3 billion years, which was too much. He said it was 153 million years instead. John Joly tried to use Edmont Halley's sea salt calculation method, but that was flawed, and decided to use the method too. He said that Earth was 89 million years old, which was too little.
Depending on who you asked, complex animal life was 3 million years, 18 million years, 600 million years, 794 million years, or 2.4 billion years old. In 1910, George Becker estimated that Earth was 55 million years old.
It was a mess, until Ernest Rutherford came along. He brought proof that Earth was millions of years old.
His evidence came from alchemy. As it turned out, Newton was right! More to come in the next chapter.