Paleontologists of a western

Under the field of science there are fights, conflicts and disputes between scientists.

We are not going to deny it.

The most notorious clash was the one between Leibniz and Newton for the authorship of the infinitesimal calculus.

Another notorious case was the conflict between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Alva Edison.

The war between the two arose when each wanted to impose its electricity transmission system.

While Edison defended direct current, Tesla did so with alternating current.

But there were also other disputes that, although not so notorious, brought to light the personal miseries of the scientists in conflict.

The one that concerns us today is one of those fights that seem taken out of a Wild West movie, when the glare of the gold mines blinded the gunmen.

It is known as The War of the Bones and took place in the mid-19th century.

Two paleontologists were involved in it, who ended up being rivals to the death.

Their names: Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.

Cope invited Marsh to contemplate his work and the latter realized the mistake made by his partner.

In his reconstruction, Cope had mistaken the head for the tail

They met in 1864 in Berlin.

They were both refugees in Europe.

Not only did they have in common the concern of interpreting the past through fossils, but the two had escaped from the United States, due to the Civil War.

The friendship was broken when they returned to their country.

It was the year 1868 and Cope had just discovered in New Jersey the remains of a strange reptile that he named

Elasmosaurus

(ribbon reptile).

He instinctively rebuilt it and the sketch was published in the prestigious

Transactions

magazine

of the American Philosophical Society.

To show off the find, he invited Marsh to contemplate his work and the latter realized the mistake made by his partner.

In his reconstruction, Cope had mistaken the head for the tail.

This appreciation of Marsh so stung Cope that he did not heed any more reasons from his partner.

It had to be Joseph Leidy, a professor of natural history, who proved Cope's mistake, by taking the last vertebra from the strange reptile's tail and fitting it into the skull.

From that moment on, Cope and Marsh became enemies.

Faced with the humiliation suffered, Cope bought all the copies of the magazine where the sketch of his find appeared, all the copies except two that were owned by Marsh, who was not willing to release them.

From here, history is full of expeditions through the Wild West, a mythical territory where the Sioux Indians appear along with Buffalo Bill and all the imaginary of a twilight western.

In the background, the rivalry between two scientists, a violent struggle that has nothing to envy to the fight over a gold mine.

Boycotts with dynamite, skirmishes, trickery, accusations of plagiarism and even jokes like the one Marsh had when he baptized a fossil mammal as

Anisconchus cophater

, alluding to Cope and his false teeth;

the same teeth he used to joke with the Sioux and gain their trust in hostile white man's territory.

In the end, both Palentologists were ruined.

They died without making amends, leaving tons of fossils stored in unopened boxes

In the end, both paleontologists were ruined.

They died without making amends, leaving tons of fossils stored in unopened boxes.

The dispute between the two scientists was so fruitful for paleontology that it is taken as an example every time the boundless rivalry is criticized.

If it was so successful, let's imagine what would have happened if, instead of competing, both of them had cooperated.

Finally, a bookish recommendation by Michael Crichton and his posthumous novel

Dientes de Dragón

(Plaza y Janés), where he tells us this story of adventure, enmity and twilight landscapes.

A western where the past becomes the protagonist every time it tries to be unearthed.

The stone ax

is a section where

Montero Glez

, with the will of prose, exercises his particular siege to scientific reality to show that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.

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