Spotlight Day: Dinosaurs and the Bone Wars

Scandal! Treachery! Fortunes! Foul Play! Dinosaurs!

Dinosaurs, the word inspires images of fearsome gigantic monsters rediscovered from the mists of time. Infinitely popular with young and old alike and a staple of many museums around the world. Yet we have only known of these titanic creatures for barely two hundred years.

There have been many scientists that have brought the dinosaurs to life within those two centuries but two rise above the rest from the beginning during the gilded age of science: both desperate to outdo each other to gain the prize of becoming Americas leading academic in the new subject of Vertebrate Palaeontology.

What started out as friendship then turned to rivalry before an all-consuming personal war of dirty tricks and scandalous newspaper headlines that damaged the reputations not only of the scientists involved but the entire scientific community of the young United States. 

During this study day we will not only look at what makes a fossil a dinosaur and how to recognise them but also the lives and shenanigans of Professors Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope as they dig, publish and decry each other over several decades in what became known as the Bone Wars