Rocky Road: O.C. Marsh

O.C. Marsh

Archenemy of E.D. Cope in the Great Bone Wars of the late 19th century, O.C. Marsh was head of the Peabody Museum at Yale University. Marsh gained a reputation for directing excursions from his home in New England rather than venturing into the field himself. This was unfortunate, because he was reputed to be in his best temper while in the field. On the other hand, he was not known to be particularly good at finding fossils. Many discoveries credited to Marsh were actually made by his field associates, such as Arthur Lakes and Benjamin Mudge. But — perhaps because he wanted the glory for himself, or simply because that's how things were done in those days — Marsh didn't often mention assistants' names in his papers.

From Hunting Dinosaurs by Louie Psihoyos

Lucky enough to have a rich uncle who could buy him whatever position he wanted, Marsh is often maligned for having been a hack and just not a very nice guy, but he made admirable contributions to science. In the 1880s, British paleontologist H.G. Seeley classified dinosaurs as "lizard-hipped" and "bird-hipped" and even argued for separate origins of these lines, but Marsh found nearly 20 features among dinosaurs supporting common ancestry of the entire group. (Thanks to cladistics, science has ultimately sided with Marsh.)

Marsh named, among others, Apatosaurus (he also named the fossil Brontosaurus), Stegosaurus and Triceratops. He discovered pterosaur fossils and early bird fossils. Hesperornis, found in 1871, sported a beak full of teeth — early evidence for evolution from reptiles to birds.

The political battle he waged with Cope resulted in one of the greatest discovery booms in the history of paleontology, surpassed only by today's abundance of fossil finds. What's more, Marsh was among the first major proponents of evolution west of the Atlantic. And at times, he was surprisingly generous.

According to a treaty between the U.S. government and the Sioux Nation, the Sioux could claim all of western South Dakota, including the Black Hills, which the Native Americans considering sacred. Then someone found gold in the Black Hills, and the deal was more or less off. Military officers accompanied gold-diggers into the area. At an Interior Department's installation, Sioux warriors transformed the flagpole into slivers. It was into this uneasy situation that O.C. Marsh arrived to hunt fossils. Right away, he asked to meet with Sioux Chief Red Cloud.

Marsh convinced Red Cloud to let him prospect for old bones and, in return, he promised to get Sioux grievances addressed. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was expected to provide rations to the Sioux Nation, but the supplies, Marsh learned, included rotten food that no one could eat. Corruption in the agency apparently led to skimping on supplies. For all the assistant fossil hunters he mistreated, Marsh kept his word to the Red Cloud. Convincing Washington to clean up the Bureau was a slow and frustrating process, and Marsh even confronted then-president Ulysses S. Grant. When that didn't work, the fossil hunter took his story to the newspapers, eventually winning widespread sympathy and forcing reform.

For more information:
Great Feuds in Science by Hal Hellman
Hunting Dinosaurs by Louie Psihoyos
The Dinosaur Papers edited by Weishampel and White
Oceans of Kansas by Michael J. Everhart
The Reign of the Dinosaurs by Jean-Guy Michard
The Meaning of Fossils by Martin J.S. Rudwick
Fossil Legends of the First Americans by Adrienne Mayor
Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything by Leonard Warren
Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z by Richard Milner
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson