Tooth and Claw: The Dinosaur Wars of Cope and Marsh

Gr 7 Up—The conflict between two pioneering 19th-century scientists provides a framework for detailing the burgeoning scientific fields of evolutionary theory and paleontology in this accessible history for younger readers. Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh came to their professional scientific careers in the wake of the U.S. Civil War from very distinct backgrounds and achieved prominence through different means, but they began work as contemporaries and affable colleagues and ended as bitter enemies. Noyes details Marsh and Cope's individual accomplishments, their feud and its repercussions, contemporary developments in the scientific community that impacted their work, and the popular interest in science that supported their research and gave an audience to their dispute. The discovery of troves of pre-historic bones in the opening American West provided an apt landscape upon which Marsh and Cope could act out their resentments toward each other, use the media to shape the public's understanding of dinosaurs and science as a discipline, and outline the direction of paleontology for generations to come. Detailed sidebars and insets give the history and science behind Cope and Marsh's work and the ways that the pair have influenced paleontology and scientific inquiry today.