Dinosaurs
Beginning
Practically all scientists up until 170 years ago believed that God created the earth six thousand years ago and all the creatures on earth at the same time.
Ancient people would find fossils and have superstitions reasons for them. Such as ancient monsters, giants and dragons.
In 1676 England, the university of oxford was presented with an unusual bone. They published a description. It was the first illustration of a dinosaur bone published. They correctly identified the bone as the lower extremity of the thighbone or femur of a large animal and he recognized that it was too large to belong to any species known to be living in England. He therefore at first concluded it to be the thighbone of a Roman war elephant and later that of a giant human, such as those mentioned in the Bible. The bone has since been lost, but the illustration is detailed enough that some have since identified it as that of Megalosaurus.
Scrotum humanum
The first Pterodactylus specimen was described by the Italian scientist Cosimo Alessandro Collini in 1784, based on a fossil skeleton tha that at the time was thought to be the remains of a lobster or crab.
Mary Anning
In 1811, the beaches in the south of England were a popular vacation spot. Local stores would sell souvenirs including fossils and shells. A poor brother, Joseph (15) and sister, Mary (12) tried to help their family by digging for fossils and shells to sell. One day Joseph found a huge skull. Mary uncovered the body. It was an ichthyosaur, a prehistoric swimming reptile. Their mother, Molly Anning, sold the combined piece for £23 ($2500 now).
The man who bought the fossil the brother and sister found sold it to the London Museum of Natural History for £47.5 ($5,000 today) it remains there to this day.
The person who bought it took full credit for the discovery and Joseph and Mary were never mentioned. Women were not allowed in the geological society of the time.
In addition, the family's status as religious dissenters—not followers of the Church of England—attracted discrimination. Dissenters were not allowed into universities or the army, and were excluded by law from several professions.
Her father had been suffering from tuberculosis and injuries he suffered from a fall off a cliff. When he died he left the family with debts and no savings.
Mary grew up and continued to hunt for fossils in the cliffs. The cliffs were unstable during the winter months because of landslides but the landslides were also helpful in uncovering new fossils. She had a pet dog who would keep her company. One day she wrote to a friend:
"Perhaps you will laugh when I say that the death of my old faithful dog has quite upset me, the cliff that fell upon him and killed him in a moment before my eyes, and close to my feet ... it was but a moment between me and the same fate."
But in 1823, at the age of 24, Mary discovered the first complete skeleton of Plesiosaurus was discovered. People claimed it was fake but it was proved to be real.
Next, she took interest in these weird rocks. She studied them and discovered they were fossilized dinosaur poop. They cut through it and found fish scales and little bones. They could now discover what dinosaurs ate.
Next she uncovered the 2nd ever documented pterodactyl.
It's commonly thought that the tongue twister 'she sells sea shells by the seashore.' Is about her.
Georges Cuvier
In 1820 France, Georges Cuvier theorized that creatures could go extinct and that their remains might be preserved by fossilization. It was groundbreaking for the time because most people believed that the animals that exist now had been created by God and been all the animals that had been in the garden of eden.
He was one of the first people to suggest the earth had been dominated by reptiles, rather than mammals, in prehistoric times.
Cuvier is also remembered for strongly opposing theories of evolution. Cuvier believed there was no evidence for evolution, but rather evidence for cyclical creations and destructions of life forms by global extinction events such as deluges, such as the biblical flood.
Gideon Mantell
Gideon Mantell was raised in a Christian Methodist household in England.
In 1824, he discovered the first bones of Iguanadon were discovered. IIn recognition of the resemblance of the teeth to those of the iguana, they decided to name his new animal Iguanodon or 'iguana-tooth', from iguana and the Greek word odon, odontos or 'tooth'.
A more complete specimen of a similar animal was discovered in a quarry in Maidstone, Kent, in 1834 which Mantell soon acquired. He was led to identify it as an Iguanodon based on its distinctive teeth. The Maidstone slab was utilized in the first skeletal reconstructions and artistic renderings of Iguanodon, but due to its incompleteness, Mantell made some mistakes, the most famous of which was the placement of what he thought was a horn on the nose. The discovery of much better specimens in later years revealed that the horn was actually a modified thumb. Still encased in rock, the Maidstone skeleton is currently displayed at the Natural History Museum in London.
Gideon Mantell published an influential paper in 1831 entitled "The Age of Reptiles" in which he summarized the evidence for there having been an extended time during which the earth had teemed with large reptiles, and he divided that era, based in what rock strata different types of reptiles first appeared, into three intervals that anticipated the modern periods of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous.
Charles Darwin
In 1859, Darwin released his theory of evolution. Paleontology became an exploration of transitionalfossils. Darwin had collected the fossils of giant armadillos, giant llama and giant sloths in south America where today you would find the smaller versions of all three. This suggested animals could drastically change over time.
Richard Owen
In 1841 the English anatomist Richard Owen would create a new order of reptiles, which he called Dinosauria meaning 'Terrible Lizard.'
A well off man with a top education at the university of Edinburgh.
Owen was granted right of first refusal on any freshly dead animal at the London Zoo. One story goes , his wife once arrived home to find the carcass of a newly deceased rhinoceros in her front hallway.
In 1861, the Arcteoprix was discovered. Missing most of its head and neck, it was described in 1863 by Richard Owen as a bird-like reptile.
He made enemies with a lot of scientists at the time because he was competitive, unpleasant and sole peoples work.
Gideon Mantell claimed it was "a pity a man so talented should be so dastardly and envious".
American, Edward Drinker Cope came from a rich religious family. He studied reptiles and amphibians at the university of Pennsylvania. During the civil war he went and studied in Europe in order to avoid fighting in the conflict.
Orthiel Charles Marsh grew up in a modest household in New York and his education was paid for by his uncle. His uncle financed his fossil hunting excursions.
Orthiel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope were originally friends. They named dinosaurs after each other.
Then one day they fell out and became bitter toward one another. They began competing to discover the most dinosaurs and out do the other.
Both hired their own teams of fossil hunters. All such men were amateurs and had little training on paleontology. One of the men Marsh hired was a minister.
The race to discover the most dinosaurs was off and running
Marsh discovered Allosaurus.
Cope discovered Camarasaurus
Marsh discovered Diplodocus
Cope discovered Dimetrodon
Marsh discovered Mosasaurus
Edward Cope discovered a large swimming reptile called Elasmosaurus and made the mistake of putting the skull at the end of the tail. Marsh made fun of him for this years after.
But then Marsh made a similar mistake by putting the wrong head on an apatosaurus and called it a brontosaurus. This problem persists today with people stilled getting confused whether a brontosaurus exists or not.
Edward Cope went an dung in cliffs paleontologists were already working on. One of his friends told him about some interesting fossils, out in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. Near an old mine surrounded by miles of badlands.
Marsh offered two of Cope's helpers more money and convinced them to leave him. Cope paid two men to join Marsh and try to sabotage his digs.
In 1875, Marsh and Cope travelled to North Dakota. Marsh spoke to native Americans belonging to the Sioux Tribe. He promised that if they gave him their fossils and showed him where to find more, he would meet with the US government about them getting left to their own nation, which he did. 14 years later North Dakota would become part of the USA.
"Near the mouth of the Judith River, not far from the sources of the Missouri, in latitude 47° 30/ , longitude 109° 30/ , is a wild, desolate, and rugged region which I have called the "Bad Lands of the Judith," in contradistinction to those of White River. No other portion of the upper Missouri country exhibits the effects of erosion and denudation on so large a scale, and to add to the picturesque effect of the country the variegated strata are distorted and folded in a wonderful manner by the action of the subterranean forces that have elevated, the mountain masses in the vicinity. The surface of the country occupied by the deposit I am about to describe is cut up into ravines and canyons, with nearly vertical sides, rising to a height of 400 to 600 feet above the bed of the river, with scarcely a tree or shrub to greet the eye of the observer. "
Marsh had more money and therefore could hire more men. Cope would dig at one site then move, the other would send men over to try to uncover something the other missed. So in response, Cope began to dynamite his dig sites after he was done.
Stegosaurus, one of the many dinosaurs first collected and described in the Bone Wars, was originally named by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1877, from remains recovered north of Morrison, Colorado. Marsh initially believed the remains were from an aquatic turtle-like animal, and the basis for its scientific name, 'roof(ed) lizard' was due to his early belief that the plates lay flat over the animal's back, overlapping like the shingles on a roof. After further fossils were found they figured out that the plates stood up but they wrongly believed they stood in one straight row.
In 1901 another paleontologist re-examined the issue of the life appearance of Stegosaurus, coming to the conclusion that the plates were arranged in pairs in two rows along the back. However, the following year, they wrote that he now believed the plates were probably attached in staggered rows. This led the construction of the first ever Stegosaurus skeletal mount at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, which was depicted with paired plates.
Cowboy Edmund B. Wilson had been startled by the sight of a monstrous skull poking out of the side of a ravine. He tried to recover it by throwing a lasso around one of the horns. When it broke off, the skull tumbling to the bottom of the ravine, Wilson brought the horn to his boss, the rancher and avid fossil collector Charles Arthur Guernsey, who happened to show it to Hatcher. Marsh subsequently ordered Hatcher to locate and salvage the skull. When further preparation uncovered the third, nose, horn, Marsh changed his mind and gave the piece the generic name Triceratops, "three horn face".
The two groups of paleontologists worked so close together but weren't allowed to speak. They disliked one another and some of them retold stories of how some threw stones and the other group and tempers got heated a few of the men pulled their guns on one another. Luckily it got deescalated.
Bone Wars- The Later years
Judging by pure numbers, Marsh "won" the Bone Wars. Both scientists made finds of immense scientific value, but while Cope discovered a total of 56 new dinosaur species, Marsh discovered 80.
Marsh became head of the national geological commitee and pushed for a law that states that if any dinosaurs were found with government money belonged to the Smithsonian.
Cope kept detailed records and Marsh couldn't prove that any government money was used. After almost having his fossils taken away Cope published a letter recalling all the bad things Marsh had done when they were digging for fossils out west. It was also confirmed to be true by a lot of Marsh's ex-employees.
Because of this letter Marsh got forced to quit his position as head of the geological committee. And funnily had a hard time proving ownership of many of his own fossils in accordance to the law that he had inforced while trying to take Cope's fossils. A lot of his fossils got claimed by the Smithsonian.
They went on to writes paper after paper on the fossils they had discovered. They often used these papers as an opportunity to insult one another. They also tried to rename dinosaurs that the other had discovered.
When Cope died he took petty to a whole new level. He asked for his brain to be preserved and challenged Marsh that on his death he would do the same. For perhaps the first time in his life he resisted the challenge and made no such arrangements upon his death. Cope's brain is reportedly still kept at the university of Pennsylvania to this day.
Their legacy provided huge leaps in dinosaur discovery but their unprofessional and petty rivalry gave dinosaur hunters a bad name.
Moving on-
In 1902, paleontologists discovered and excavated the first documented remains of Tyrannosaurus rex. It would go on to be the most studied and well known dinosaur of all.
Radiometric dating has been carried out since 1905 when it was invented by Ernest Rutherford as a method by which one might determine the age of the Earth. In the century since then the techniques have been greatly improved and expanded.
Radiometric dating is a method used to date rocks and other objects based on the known decay rate of radioactive isotopes. Using this along with a study of the geologic layers of the rock they can estimate the age of rocks millions of years old. By doing this they can estimate the age of fossils found in the rock.
During an American Museum of Natural History expedition to the Outer Mongolian Gobi Desert, on 11 August 1923 Peter Kaisen recovered the first Velociraptor fossil known to science: a crushed but complete skull, associated with one of the raptorial second toe claws. In 1924, museum president Henry Fairfield Osborn designated the skull and claw (which he assumed to come from the hand) as the type specimen of his new genus, Velociraptor. This name is derived from the Latin words velox ('swift') and raptor ('robber').
1945- most fossils were kept at centers of learning and education which usually were in cities. Lots of cities got bombed during WW2 and some historical fossils were destroyed. They had been preserved for millions of years only to be blown up by human wars.
1957- Radiocarbon dating was invented by an American from Colorado. Radiocarbon dating is a method used to determine the age of organic material by measuring the radioactivity of its carbon content. It can be used to accurately find the age of an organic being less than 60,000 years old.
The first Argentinosaurus bone was discovered in 1987 by a farmer. It's currently the biggest dinosaur ever discovered.
https://youtu.be/4pU9O_LFxmk
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