Too Big to Walk: The New Science of Dinosaurs. Brian Ford J.

and he used the regular income to support him in his private interests. In 1860 he enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, but he found their approach too pedestrian so he did not stay to graduate. (I have to admit that I had a similar experience at Cardiff University; settling down to study a syllabus with which I was already familiar did not appeal to me either, when there was a great wide world awaiting discovery.) Cope always kept the admission slip for the academic year 1861–1862, and – since these forms were always collected on the first day of the academic year – we can assume that he left university late in 1861. One of his teachers of comparative anatomy was Joseph Leidy, and it was he who encouraged the young Cope to join the staff of the Academy. Because of his position in the Academy of Natural Sciences, Cope was able to join the American Philosophical Society, and it was this august body that provided him with an outlet for many of his pioneering papers on palæontology.

      Edward Drinker Cope (left), born in Philadelphia in 1840, followed Lamarck’s theory of acquired characteristics. In a 22-year period he discovered more than 1,000 new fossil species, including 56 new dinosaurs. The co-star of the ‘bone wars’ of late nineteenth-century America was Othniel Charles Marsh (right), born in 1831 in Lockport, NY. He discovered about 500 new fossil species, including 80 dinosaurs. There was much bitter rivalry between Marsh and Cope.

      Two years later, the American Civil War erupted, and, to avoid the draft, Cope quit America for Europe. He travelled to England, France, Germany, Ireland, Austria and Italy, taking full advantage of the time to visit seats of learning, museums, and some of the distinguished scientists of the day. But he was unhappy for much of the time, and became depressed. He even set fire to his voluminous diaries and papers until he was prevailed upon by friends to keep some intact – but most of his early documents were lost. Cope was cheered by a visit to Berlin in 1863, where he met a fellow enthusiast who was equally fascinated by fossils. The two frequently went out together and soon became friends. This new acquaintance was Othniel Charles Marsh, who, at 32, was 9 years his senior. They were contrasting young men: whereas Cope lacked formal education after school, Marsh held two university degrees. While the eager Cope had published some 37 scientific papers, Marsh still had only two published papers to his name. Marsh took Cope out to explore the city and its museums, and the two became confidants. As they parted they agreed to correspond, and to exchange specimens. Both seemed destined for greatness. Palæontology was blossoming, and a new world awaited them.

      Back in Philadelphia as the Civil War was ending, Cope’s father arranged for him to secure a teaching post at Haverford College, a private school with which the family was associated. Cope was still unqualified, so the college awarded him an honorary degree. He married a young Quaker named Annie Pim, aiming less at a romantic liaison than a practical arrangement. He was less interested in poetic passion than in the ability to manage a household, he told his father. They were married in 1865 and next year had a daughter, Julia Biddle Cope. Edward Cope continued to publish papers on anatomy, and also wrote his first paper on palæontology – it described a small carboniferous amphibian fossil Amphibamus grandiceps from Grundy County, Illinois, which he said was ‘discovered in a bed belonging to the lower part of the coal measures … imbedded in a concretion of brown limestone.’5

      Cope travelled extensively in the U.S., always searching for specimens, and – although he enjoyed teaching – he complained that he had no time for his serious studies. The work on the Hadrosaurus skeleton continued to captivate him, so he sold the farm that his father had given him and moved to Haddonfield, which is where Foulke had found the fossil. Cope now started digging in the marl beds and was soon rewarded by a spectacular find. He unearthed the remains of a new dinosaur that measured 25 feet (8 metres) in length and could have weighed about 2 tons in life. He named it Laelaps aquilunguis but later discovered that the genus Laelaps had already been assigned to a small mite, so the name was changed. Today we know it as Dryptosaurus aquilunguis. He also obtained a fossil that had been discovered in Kansas and excavated by a military surgeon, Theophilus Turner. This was a 30-foot (10-metre) plesiosaur weighing about 4 tons and named Elasmosaurus platyurus. He described it as having an elongated tail and a short neck, and, always rushing to publish, he prepared an illustration that showed his newly discovered dinosaur perched on a sandbank as plesiosaurs frolicked in the nearby water.

      Cope placed the skull on the tail end of an elasmosaur in the foreground of this illustration published in American Naturalist in 1869. Once Marsh had pointed out this mistake, Cope tried to have every incorrect version destroyed.

      The family lived comfortably and entertained house guests. Cope was a man of enormous energy and boundless enthusiasm. Henry Weed Fowler, a zoologist friend, said he was ‘of medium height and build, but always impressive with his great energy and activity.’ Cope was a friendly and open character, and people found him approachable and kind. If a passing youngster drifted from the street into the museum where he was at work, Cope would chat animatedly about the work he was doing. Many modern accounts portray him as an avuncular and warm individual with high moral values and integrity, though some of his associates recorded that his language was foul, he had a bad temper that erupted without warning – and he was a habitual womanizer. A one-time friend, the artist Charles R. Knight, claimed that: ‘In his heyday, no woman was safe within five miles of him.’ In an era of machismo, some colleagues even admired this in Cope. One American palæontologist, Alfred Romer, commented that: ‘His little slips from virtue were those we might make ourselves, were we bolder.’ If Cope was anything, he was bold.6