Life Through Geologic Time

Othniel Charles Marsh was an American paleontologist who is responsible for the discovery of numerous ancient species, several “accidental” falsehoods, such as brontosaurus, which I refuse to capitalize as it is not real, yet, and the origin of birds. He was born into a “modest” family (which I shall take as meaning middle class,) and was able to afford higher education due to his awesome uncle, George Peabody, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist. O. C. Marsh went to Yale, studying anatomy, geology, and mineralogy after he graduated, while he traveled the world. He started the Bone Wars with Edward Drinker Cope, a former close friend, who he drove to being a rival by being mean spirited about a mix-up of a fossil that Cope put together. He started the Bone Wars in the 1870’s and it didn’t end until the 1890’s, that’s twenty years of quarreling over fossil finds, funding, and misnomers. He even destroyed fossils that he could not immediately recover so that other paleontologists couldn’t get their grubby little scientific hands on them. Marsh ended up with financial troubles near the end and had to forfeit almost his entire collection to the government, as the government funded most of his digs. He had something to do with the USGS, but I can’t seem to find it, sorry. Altogether, he was a horrible scientist, but he brought so much to the field of paleontology, that he is one of the greatest paleontologists of all time.